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There is plenty of bothering between these two, but they had the funnest (loudest) time dancing in the kitchen today to the crazy piano music from the keyboard.  It made my heart smile to watch.  

     

Christmas Eve was – as always – a magical day/night!  We spent the day as a family running errands and having the best time together.  We started the evening with the 60th anniversary of the neighborhood sing at my grandma's corner… 

  

  

     

     

You can see Nate even enjoys himself at the sing.  :)

I love, love, love this tradition!!  

Next we headed to the Adams for family bingo and presents.  

  

 

Then we headed home for Christmas jammies from Grandma and Grandpa B (I always hear Liam Neeson's voice saying "The first gift of Christmas!" even though now the kids open earlier presents, since we always said that opening jammies growing up!).  

  

And after Santa tracking on NORAD and tossing out the reindeer food into the windy night, everyone was off to bed!  Except for Nate and I, of course, who always leave wrapping presents till Christmas Eve.   🙂

 

Just a few things happening around these parts leading up to the big day:  

morning hot chocolate in their Christmas party mugs:  

Showing off the fun Christmas projects they made at school (and Zach's awesome white elephant prize):  
   

Making (and wrapping!) homemade caramels:  

  

Emma is always the driving force behind this, and both she and Zach were such good helpers this year!!

Dropping the letters to Santa off at the Macy's mailbox (per tradition) – hope they make it in time for the big guy to do something about it, we were pretty slow in getting them sent this year!!
  
Zach looks pretty comfy in the empty Santa chair, doesn't he?  :)

Christmas Sunday family pic – can you tell Meg has an enormous piece of candy in her mouth?!  Oh well, when you only get one take with the timer, this is what you get.  
 

Love having Bob around… I don't think I got a picture of him before he left but I did get a picture of his note at least!  The 3 younger kids were up extra early every day in december so they could be the first to find Bob.  

And, all 4 kids after our visit to Santa.  I kicked myself a few times for not being willing to pay the $28 for a santa picture (they asked you not to take pictures with your own camera) until I realized later that weekend that since we're all pretty sure the real Santa was the one in MN anyways, I didn't need a picture of some strange man with my kids.  The kids are the ones I care about in my picture anyways.  (Nate is a wonderful voice of reason.)  

They were all so cute with Santa though.  Meg asked for "an Ellie doll", Carter for Legos, Emma for an art kit, and Zach for "comfy socks."  That one took Santa off guard.  :)

Emma made a countdown to Christmas chain, and all of a sudden it only had one ring left!!  I smiled every morning when I came down to a ripped off link on the floor under the curtain.  Can't believe it is almost Christmas eve!!  

  

I have always wanted to attend a concert at the Cathedral of the Madeline and was super excited when one of their concerts worked out with our Christmas schedule!  

The cathedral was beautiful, and the music was lovely.  And, since it was mostly in latin, the 35 minutes of it was just the right length for my younger listeners.  :)

For the cousin Christmas party this year, we met for bowling and arcades at Fat Cats.  

(and a little YMCA.) 

  
Carter got a 100 ticket jackpot on one of the games!  

Then it was back to the Adams house for the cousin present exchange.  The kids had a fun time together trying out some of the board games they gave each other!  Carter was especially excited to get the real game of LIFE (and has taken such good care of all the little pieces every time he gets it out!) 

A fun afternoon Christmas tradition with our cousins!  

 

We ended up picking the perfect night for our temple square family adventure this year!  It wasn't too cold (Zach was ready to go without a coat, although in the end he was glad he listened to Nate), and it was not busy at all!  We missed the carriage rides this year that they no longer have, but had a great time anyways.   We started the night with dinner @ Tony Burger:  

Got to see the Macy's windows up close without any crowds: 

And had a wonderful time taking our time exploring temple square.  We snuck in to a high school choir concert for a minute, wandered through looking at all the beautiful lights, and even checked out all of the luminaries and nativities from different countries.  

  

Nevermind Meg, she is pretending to be a dog in that picture.  That is better than when she wouldn't even look at the guy taking the picture of our whole family, so we didn't complain.  

   

And, we got a front row view of the nativity story!  I remember always wanting to watch the whole thing and never getting to because it was too cold/too late/we were too far back and couldn't see anything anyways… so it was a dream come true for me.  :)

This is one of my favorite traditions and it was a wonderful night!  

Meg's ballet teacher hosts a Sugar Plum Fairy tea party at Christmastime where she lets the girls dance to the nutcracker music with Clara and the sugarplum fairy, and have a special tea party while they watch some of the dancing from the nutcracker movie.  Meg absolutely loved all of it!  I couldn't get her to look at me during the tea party since she was mesmerized by the ballet.  We ended up borrowing a copy from the library and she watched it again and again that week.  Love this little dancer and her cute teacher that let the parents come to watch the magic.  

   

 

  

The Woodward Christmas party started at Grandma's house with a lovely Santa waffle (and bacon!) breakfast.  Yum!  

  

  

 Zach loves it when I take pictures of him with his mouth full.  :)

 

The party included the traditional "find the pickle" game, and the treasure hunt complete with instruments and jingle bells to start it off.   The highlight, though, was grandpa hiding behind the tree at the end of the treasure hunt… it was quite the surprise and a huge hit with the kids.  

  

We ended the party with a trip to see Big Hero 6 at the theater and made a fun snowman ornament to hang on the tree!   It was a fun day celebrating with cousins!

In December.  Holding hands.  Pretty much a recipe for a happy mother!  This afternoon at the park while Zach had basketball practice was perfect!  

  

Even though it was not really convenient, we took the family down for a quick (and I mean quick!) trip to St. George for Zach to play in part of his baseball tournament.  We drove down after trick-or-treating Friday night, watched 2 Cougar games in the FREEZING wind on Saturday morning, took the shuttle into Zion Nat. Park and hiked to the Lower Emeral Pool in just the right amount of rain, went to dinner, and swam the evening away before driving back early the next morning to get Nate to the airport.  It was crazy fast, but it was worth it – it was fun to show the kids southern Utah, the desert was beautiful in the fall, and we made some fun family memories!