dreaming of a white christmas

we began our christmas weekend with a trip up to grapevine, texas on the 23rd. a guy that curtis works with and his wife invited us to go to ICE! with them. its located at a huge hotel called the gaylord and the event involves a freezing cold tent, big blue parkas, and a lot of ice. they fly some artists in from china and they create these awesome sculptures out of ice. the theme this year was "shrek the halls" and although i don't think it was worth the price, it was still pretty cool and a fun family outing. they had 3 slides made out of ice and that's all mason talked about the whole time. this is him going down the slide on his back. he loved it!
this is the nativity made completely out of ice...best part of the night :)what a handsome boy!

the day of christmas eve we made cookies for santa. mason had fun helping and couldn't wait to put them out that night!

christmas eve, a family in our ward invited us over for dinner. we joined them along with the missionaries and another young couple and enjoyed food and acting out the nativity. mason had fun playing with a boy from nursery and it was nice to join others for the evening.

christmas morning arrived and the madness began. both kids got way too much stuff ranging from a train for mason to slinky's from santa. curtis got everything he asked for (all things for his xbox or course) and i got a kindle fire and a new camera. was not expecting both of them. turns out curtis won a 42 inch tv at a work raffle and since we already have one, he returned the tv and used to money to buy the camera and used to rest to buy himself a few things. i swear he is the luckiest guy i know. he always wins things in drawings...then gives them to me :)
i was pulling paper out of sophies mouth all morning! everytime i turned around she had found another piece to chew on!

mason had more fun with sophies toys than she did!2 crazy kids!

mason has a t-ball set that he loves. unfortunately he didn't have a glove so he usually used his shoe :) santa was nice enough to bring him a glove!

blue eyes, blonde mohawk!

mason got the pillow pet he wanted

so, we survived our first christmas away from home and overall it wasn't too bad. we did miss everyone but it was fun to be with our own little family and start our own traditions!

hope everyone had a merry christmas!!

so long 2011!!

what a year it has been! we've been up, we've been down and have probably experienced every emotion imaginable. for the most part i'm glad it's over :) i hope the next year will be just as good and not as bad. it will still be full of learning experiences (curtis just got called as the sunday school president, i am now the ward choir director just to name a few) but as a family we can get through it!! as for the past, here is a little review of some big events our family had in 2011.

curtis graduated from southern utah university in may with a bachelors degree in business management. the company he was working for offered him a promotion within the company. we were so proud of him and so glad he wouldn't have to go to school all day and work all night anymore!!

on may 24th our beautiful little sophie was born. everything went well for both of us and we were so happy to have a little girl in our family. immediately mason was a great big brother and to this days loves his sister. she is such a sweetie with gorgeous blue eyes. she is trying to crawl and is starting to stand up to things and is a major mommas girl. we love her!!

in july we moved to texas. it was a huge change for all of us. we happened to move here during a record breaking summer but somehow made it through the heat. in october they finished building our house and we moved in! it is so nice having our own home, a yard, and the kids both have their own rooms. in the past 2 months we have already had tons of memories and cant wait for more!

for thanksgiving, some of curtis' family came to our house for a few days. it was so much fun letting the kids play together and just hanging out doing absolutely nothing!

in december, my family came out the week before christmas. we haven't seen them since we moved so it was so great to have them here! mason loved seeing them again and kept camille and dallin busy most of the time. it was hard to send them home and we can't wait to see them again!

last but not least is chritmas but i already talked about that too so read the previous post for more on that!
we hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and may you have a wonderful 2012!

our first big hosting event

we were so blesssed to have curtis family come to our house for thanksgiving! carolyn and jaxton flew down monday before the holiday and they both got the flu the following day :( the rest of the family got here wednesday morning and luckily our other 2 visitors were feeling better. unfortunately mason got sick that night after dinner and i started throwing up at about 3 am so no thanksgiving dinner for us! tony did prepare a nice turkey and we had a great dinner for those who were able to eat it. the next day it was tony's turn with the bug. everyone else got some shopping done and got some great deals! the majority of family left saturday night but carolyn and jaxton got to stay a couple extra days which was fun! curtis was supposed to talk in church that sunday but conveniently got sick that day. it was pretty funny that 6 out of 10 people got sick over the course of 6 days. other than that we really had a good time. the kids loved playing with each other and carolyn and i enjoyed getting out and doing things together!

here are the grandkids with their grandma! sophie sleeping with grandpa after he slaved in the kitchen all day!
all the kids took a bath...what chaos!
the two older kids made these turkeys on thanksgiving...as you can see mason still isn't 100%

the kids had a blast with carolyn! she is awesome!

me and the boys