Swimming & Stuff

We all went swimming in Washington, and there were so many fun pictures, they get their very own post. Grandpa Havens with the boys.

Baby Shane, so cute!

In the lazy river.

Grandpa was just singing and kissing and spinning Shane in the water. It was pretty sweet.

One sweet baby, and one smokin' grandma!

My lovely sister in law and her baby Shane.

At the children's museum.

This was at Jump planet. Grandma & Grandpa & Chase showed Crew how its done.Then they all went for a ride.

Christmas Part 2

Christmas Eve - Mom's Birthday - Everyone was together. It was very nice.

Kids opening presents. Cute moment before we started opening presents, Crew and Chase were upstairs playing and we tried to call them to come down to open presents only to hear: "We don't want to come down! We are playing up here!" It was cute to see them play together.
At Grandma's for Christmas.
They liked playing in the box.

A classic Havens dinner.
All the cousins on the Havens side. Chase, Shane, Jane, and Crew.
Jane & Shane. Binkie Buddies.
I just thought this was cute. He must have been telling her something.
Some Highlights: Sleeping in, eating a lot, early morning tennis, swimming, jump planet, a lot of shopping with our Christmas money, and a night out on the town for me and Ryan. And again, our favorite part was spending time with our loved ones!

Christmas Part 1

Ward Christmas party. Everyone danced this year. It was a good time.

The only good thing about our layover in Chicago: being the sole travelers continuing on to the next destination and having the Crew invite us to check out the cockpit. The pilot even offered to take our picture.

Ok, no one is looking in the picture, but I took a quick one to get the idea of what Christmas with the Vellinga's is like. And there's another table behind me, not pictured. And I don't even know where are the little kids were during all this.

The three newest additions. Sophie, Jackson, and Jane.

I tried, but it ain't easy getting a good one of all of them. I had like 4 people singing and dancing behind me while I tried to take their picture.
And play time around the house.
I could pretty much always count on finding Crew in the treehouse. It was his favorite spot!

Highlights from the trip:

Staying up late pretty much every night - just talking and catching up, cafe rio, temple square and chuckarama, boys fishing trip/movie night, girls shopping trip/lunch, family giftcard exchange, ogden treehouse. But most of all, we just enjoyed seeing our family and being together.

Happy Birthday Dad

Bocce Ball

Look at those toofers! Her top two teeth are huge, and there is a big gap between them.

Gave Crew some chocolate today. . .

Gingerbread Houses

I have really been in the baking spirit this holiday. . . printing recipes left and right, and just waiting for the opportunity to make them for some event or gathering. I had been wanting to make gingerbread houses this year. So when our friends invited us over, it was the perfect opportunity. I spent one night rolling and baking the pieces. Then let them sit out for a day or two to really harden. Then the day of decoration came. Henry was really into it. He had just been telling me all about building houses, and really knows his stuff.

Crew was happy because his face was stuffed with candy the whole time. He let Ryan do most of the work, while he took care of the candy. Parent fail: When we visit other people's house its nearly impossible to get Crew to eat anything because he is too overwhelmed with so many new toys. This particular day I just decided we would feed him on the way home, or when we got home so I could enjoy my dinner and avoid force feeding a resistant 2 year old. I wasn't really paying attention, or realizing what was going on, while he ate LOADS and LOADS of candy during gingerbread house construction and then wouldn't eat much real food later. I layed in bed pondering my decisions of the evening.

Finished product! Cute cute kids!

And, I had been craving sugar cookies, and found this cute idea on pinterest. Printed it out and waited. . . and the perfect opportunity to make them just came my way, so I had to. Aren't they so cute?! Melted snowmen!

Live Nativity & Trains

This year I had a few Christmas activities that I really wanted to do, so we squeezed them in one evening as our FHE activity. We went to see a train display in a nearby town. It was pretty big, with lots of trains - I was even surprised by how long some of them were. It was fun to see, but kind of hard for Crew to stay behind the crowd rail and not run up and grab the trains. . . so we weren't there very long :)

That same night we went to a live drive through nativity that was done at a local church. Right when we drove up, there was this crazy guy dressed up like a scientist that told us he was going to take us back in time to Bethlehem. He was very loud, and came right up to the window, so Crew didn't quite know what to expect. I HAD to get a picture of his face - we had his window rolled down.

Here is the crazy mad scientist. Man, this guy really got into character! It made it fun. Then we drove though this tunnel that had a projector with an image twirling in front of us, so it looked like we were being transported to Bethlehem.
I didn't get any other shots of the Roman soldiers guarding the gates, the nice inn keeper who told us there was no room, the shepards with the angel, the wise men following the star, or the actual scene with Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus - and a cute little girl dressed up as a lamb who kept waving and smiling at Crew. But I caught my kids riding through, looking at all the people who came right up to our window to chat with us.
This is when we were still in the time machine.
At the end, they even brought free hot chocolate to our window!