Christmas

The Monday before Christmas we got together with the some neighbors and made gingerbread houses for Family Home Evening.  This is serious business.

Gingerbread houses are very good to eat, too.  Sydney and Emily:

Emily is very proud:

 Christmas Eve (All of us in one picture looking the same direction!!):


Christmas Day:

Matthew--Sweet happiness:

The temple pictures are one of my favorite presents from this year.  A friend's mother-in-law works at a place and these are ones that they were just going to throw away so they sell them for a great price.  Madison loves the San Diego temple, Emily chose the Manti (she was with me), and Ally loves the Salt Lake temple.  Matthew also has the Provo temple.  During last conference we were reminded again that every child needs to have a picture of the temple in their room so we ordered prints through the distribution center.  Charlie did a beautiful job of hanging these with the prints and I hope it is something that they can have forever.

When the girls opened this present together, the first words out of Ally's mouth was, "Oh, my gosh.  We are going to kill ourselves."  Yep, this is the reason that we bought it.  Obviously not to kill themselves, but so we can learn that guns are not bad.  Charlie is teaching them about how to shoot and they love it!  Matthew thinks that it is equally his and we can only shoot when he is sleeping.

 This cute little thing is ready for church:

The other highlight of our Christmas was giving the 12 days of Christmas to two families.  They weren't the traditional and most were very simple (oranges, stickers, cookie dough, donuts), but we loved doing it and hopefully it brought them some joy as well.  We decided to reveal who we were at the end and the Peredes were so sweet and said that it was the biggest highlight of Christmas for them.  On our doorstep the left us the most amazing bowl made out of bread filled with rolls.  I want to try to make one of those!  I really want our girls to learn to give to others and hopefully this was a small, fun way to do that.

The other highlight of the month was Charlie taking off a week and we just stayed home.  It was wonderful!