Movin' right along!

 

This is the quickest we have ever built a house. In six weeks we went from dirt to this! This picture is not even the to date one, as the roofer is done and this pic clearly has no shingles. Doug spent the week between Christmas and New years wiring our house, He is finishing the wiring this week although it is much slower now that he is only there for a couple hours a day, but it is really moving right along. The weather has been so nice here (68degrees today) that we were able to get our garage floor poured, we would pour our driveway too but, we are staining the garage floor and have to wait for it to cure to do that so we are just waiting for the days to pass on that, The plumber, framer and heating guy are all almost done! So next week we should see the insulation, and Sheetrock!  We are very excited but anxious too, once the tape and texture guys are done we take over from there, and it is a lot of HARD work, rewarding but hard, lots of time and energy to get it done and done right. This being the first time we have built with kids, it could prove to be even harder? Only time will tell. But any way we toss the dice things will slow once we get to that point, we are pretty positive we will hit our goal  date for completion though, especially with everything working out so nicely on the front end. Building is definitely not for everyone, but we do love it....

My bad the roof is almost finished...

Merry Christmas!?!

 I'm only two weeks late! LOL, better late then never though right... We had a Very Merry Christmas this year. It was so fun to have my whole family together to enjoy the holiday. We love having everyone here. On Friday the day before Christmas eve my parents took our kids for the night. Addy had been dying to have a sleep over with all the cousins, she asked grandma for her birthday wish if she could come stay, so we arranged for that to happen, then Saturday was Christmas Eve, My parents always do their Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, it was a LOVELY dinner, everything so TASTY! Everyone enjoyed themselves even our newest family member Kenzie (Our Neice) was up for the event.

 After Dinner there was a special surprise guest, SANTA!!!! Addy and the other big kids were thrilled, but apparently this was not James night, it was the first time of the four  times we saw Santa this year that he cried, Doug loves these kind of pictures though so I guess we all got what we wanted for Christmas. After Santa left we did a small skit "Chrismastime in the America's" it uses scriptures in the book of Mormon to tell the Story of Christ's birth and speaks of his Purpose and that he will come again, And has tons of music it was a lovely way to bring in the true spirit of Christmas. Then we headed home to open our traditional 1 gift on christmas eve....We all got Jammies.

 Everyone was so excited for Christmas day, although we had 9:00 church and a big day ahead of us so instead of getting the kids up early we did the stuff from Santa in the morning and left our gifts to open Christmas evening when we got home from my parents house. We celebrated all day long, it was GREAT! Here we are heading up stairs to see if Santa came...

 He did! Addy got just what she has been asking for.... She rode the scooter around all morning we even managed to get dressed on it The only time she was off it was when Jimmy was on it, No Santa did not bring him a scooter but he should have, he got a rody donkey to bounce/ ride but all he wants to do is ride sister's scooter he is very close to figuring it out....

 After we checked out our gifts from Santa, we got dressed and headed to church, then over to my parents for brunch, our traditional eggs whatever and cinnamon rolls, we even managed to get some family pictures in, although only the silly ones looked any good to me.... This is the first time in like 6 or 7 years that we have all been together for Christmas, it really was so fun!

 Jimmy slept through everyone opening their gifts, but when he woke up Grandpa was kind enough to help him enjoy the festivities too. I wasn't sure we would ever be able to sell Addy on a holiday other then Halloween, she still adds Halloween into her Jingle bells, because she just loves it that much. I put all the Christmas decor and whatnot's away while the kids were napping one day, Addy's response was "OH NO" when she saw that it was all put away, then she asked if we could watch a Halloween show? But I do think she loved Christmas and the idea of Santa, why? Because she has written him at least 5 letters since, all of which her own idea We had a wonderful Christmas Season. I hope you all had a wonderful 2011 Christmas too.