This post will be full of pictures. We had a great Christmas and New Years. It has been six years since I spent the holidays with my family in Utah. We decided it was about time we did it. I am so grateful to Bryan for being willing to do this. Here we all are on Christmas Eve in our new PJs.
Both of my girls love seeing Christmas lights so we decided what a better place to show them lights than to go to Temple Square...it was cold, but a lot of fun!
Christmas morning was so much fun. Both girls loved seeing what they got and it was fun to see them love each and every thing. Mia's favorite part was ripping open the presents. She just wanted to rip the paper off...she didn't care what she got at all as long as she had paper to rip!!
Claire asked Santa for Scooby Doo characters. She was thrilled to see she had been a good enough girl to get what she asked for!!!
Also in Claire's letter to Santa she asked for a baby doll for her little sister...Mia loves her new baby doll.
I think Claire's favorite gift of all though was the camera Grandma Lois and Papa Don gave her. She has had so much fun taking pictures of just about everything in sight...including turning the lens to get pictures of herself. What a fun gift for Claire!!!
This is the first or second time in our marriage that I was able to surprise Bryan with a gift (thanks to our friend Ben's help)...Bryan loves riding his bike with Ben for exercise, but he doesn't have a road bike just a mountain bike. I want to encourage him to do the things he loves (especially when it is exercise) so I decided to spoil him. Here he is after he realized what his surprise was!! (I think he was still in shock when I took the picture)
This is the best picture I got of the girls in their Christmas dresses. I made the skirts out of t-shirts. I think they turned out great. The girls looked so cute in them.
Santa gave Claire, Mia, Grandma Nancy and Papa Chuck, Rudolph noses in their stockings...who could resist this Kodak moment?
We were able to spend time with Uncle Brett and Aunt BethAnn. Uncle Brett showed our girls how to use Nerf Guns. They had a great time shooting them and trying to get the darts to stick on the window. I love the look of concentration on Mia's face as she even tries to aim the gun.
This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip. My mom as a picture of my niece Summer trying to open the door of the Salt Lake Temple. I have always loved it so I decided it was time to get my girls doing the same (thanks for the idea Ginet). I have tried a few times to do this, but the temple was always closed off, but this time it wasn't. I love how Claire can easily get the handle and is ready to go in, but I love even more seeing Mia on her tip toes trying to hard to reach the handle! Our wish is some day our girls will be worthy to enter and will enter the doors of the temple!!
One of our other adventures was to see the UP house. This is a house built in Utah for the parade of homes this year. It looks exactly like the house in the movie UP. The inside is also decorated similar to the inside of the house on the movie too. It was so much fun to see. Thanks for Kenley (one of my nieces) for showing it to us.
We finished off our trip by celebrating the New Years with my parents. We let Claire stay up late to bang pots and pans to welcome the new year...we had a great time celebrating with the Owen family too; well sort off...we celebrated the the New Years on Eastern Standard time (my sister and her family live in Virginia)...so we say we celebrated with them.
This is what we saw as we headed home to Washington. I think that our girls had a lot of fun, because they sure slept good on the long drive home!
We wanted to thank everyone who helped us have a great holiday. We loved having friends and family come and see us. We enjoyed playing board games, playing just dance, laughing with each other, eating good food and of course making great memories with people we love.
For her birthday Aunt LeeAnn, Uncle John and Katelynn gave her a bag with hair necessities in it (it had a blow dryer, straightener, curling iron, a curler, a brush and a bottle to use as pretend hair spray...later Claire added her fake scissors from her doctors kit to her hair bag). Claire then created her own salon in our basement. She had taken a chair and put it in front of her kitchen sink. She had Katelynn sit in that chair and lean back; she even put a"towel" (apron) under Katelynn's neck to make her more comfortable. Next, she put the doctors lab coat on Katelynn as if it was the smock Janelle uses at the salon. Finally she began to "wash" Katelynn's hair.
Of course after your hair is washed, the next step is to get your hair cut...which is exactly what Claire proceeded to do for Katelynn.
After the hair cut, Claire then used the blow dryer and dried Katelynn's hair and styled it.
Not sure if this is Claire's way of saying this is what she wants as a career or if it says she has spent too much time in a salon....not matter what it means, it was so cute to watch!!
