One thing I love about Christmas is all the beautiful Christmas dresses that we got to dress up Alexis in (especially since Skylar won't dress up anymore!). She wore a different dress each week throughout the month of December...somehow I didn't catch one....and the dress from our family picture was the one she wore on Christmas day.
This one was my absolute favorite! What a little model we have!
On the Saturday of every December we usually get together with my entire family and celebrate my Grandma's birthday. This year, my grandma said that we could have the party, but she wasn't going to come. She knew it was time for her to return home to our Heavenly Father. Every year we have to rush to or from the party because Skylar always has her dance at the Festival of Trees the same day. It makes for a crazy day!! This year, there wasn't any conflict, which was so bittersweet. My grandma always felt bad that she had to miss Skylar dancing because she was the guest of honor at her party...she was the most supportive grandma & great-grandma! I hope that somehow my grandma was finally able to be there to see Skylar dance because she looked gorgeous and did an awesome job!!
Dancing away....
This was the first performance Skylar has done now that she's in the Jr. Company at her dance studio. She has improved so much & has really got the skills now! Although it's been a demanding schedule it has totally been worth it to see how much Skylar is enjoying herself!
On the way to the Festival of Trees....honestly minutes before we got there...poor Nick puked all over the car (and it was a rental from our car accident!!)!! It was a disaster! We luckily had planned for an extra few minutes before so we ran to Target, cleaned him and the car up, bought an entire new outfit for him, and barely made it back in time for Skylar to go on stage! Nick was a good sport and stayed in the stroller throughout the performance and then endured us walking around to look at the trees for a few minutes....puke bag prepared. We only saw a few cool ones before the miserable kid just couldn't stop getting sick long enough to go on and we headed home....where he continued to be sick the rest of the weekend, poor kid.
We took the kids to see the Hot Shots dance studio performance of the Nutcracker. We've been a couple of times but not for a couple of years. It is the perfect version for kids...plus it's not pricey!! It was Kade's and Alexis's first time seeing it. Alexis absolutely LOVED it! She was dancing in her seat and her eyes were completely glued to the stage! She now recognizes Nutcracker music whenever she hears it and gets so excited about it. Our tiny dancer was in awe! Kade? He was "just hungry"! What a boy!
December 6th is St. Nick's Day and our kids love leaving their shoes out the night before so that we can fill them with fun things to do throughout the season. We always get a gingerbread house and little crafts for them to enjoy. This year we decided we needed to replace our old Christmas VHS movies with some DVDs since we haven't been able to watch them for years! We got the Rankin Bass set (Rudolf, Frosty, etc.), Elf, & It's a Wonderful Life. I love all of those shows! We had a blast watching them throughout the month!
The kids love this tradition and so do I!
I even made special breakfast treats for St. Nick's Day...which I hope made up for the fact that we totally spaced making our traditional sweet rolls for St. Lucia's Day this year!!
December 6th is also Children's Day and that night every year is the Christmas Box Angel candlelight ceremony at cemeteries across the country to remember little angels gone to soon. This is our second year without our little Gabriel and it was so good to go again. We decided to attend the ceremony in SLC this year because the statue there has significance to us. It was a beautiful program with wonderful speakers and music.
We all got to hold a candle and place a white rose on the statue in remembrance of our little Gabriel. It choked me up to see how tenderly each of the kids laid their rose down for their little brother. They love him and miss him so much.
One of the speakers at the ceremony was the author of the Christmas Box, Richard Paul Evans. We had the chance to meet him and talk to him for a few minutes. I told him how much his books had helped me get through Christmas and the last year without my baby and he gave me a giant hug and a kiss on the cheek. It was sort of weird, but very kind of him!
Our family with the beautiful statue....
Long story short, the guy who took our picture asked me to take his picture and it turned out to be a very long process! We were some of the last few there in the cemetery. I guess it was worth it because I could take a picture of the amazing statue with all of the roses left for the sweet babies gone too soon. It was breathtaking and heartbreaking at the same time.
On the way home, we drove by Temple Square. We always make it to see the lights but this year we just couldn't swing it (we've had sick kids all the last week!) and so this was our only Temple Square "visit" this year! 
Alexis had her first dance recital! It was absolutely adorable!! She was so excited to dance onstage and did such a beautiful job on both of her dances (she's on the far left in both). Here she is in her costume for I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas....
Her second dance was Up on the Housetop. Alexis is such a sweet tiny dancer!
We had our ward party and Skylar got to be a part of the wonderful Nativity as one of the angels.
Then we got to meet Santa!
Someone (Kade) got the CRAZY idea that we needed to have one more cookout before winter really hit. Somehow he talked us into it too! So we had a cookout & it was freezing!! We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows and made s'mores and tried to stay as warm as we could by the fire.
As freezing cold as it was, we had a fun time bundling up and cooking out! Plus the s'mores were worth it!!
We took a trip to the Riverwoods for FHE so that we could look at the lights and go on a carriage ride. The line was ginormous!! The kids played around while we waited.
But it was sooooo cold! We were thankful for the warm fires to warm up a little.
Finally...our turn!!
Dad cuddled with the girlsies while I cuddled with the boysies.
Of course we had to thank the horse for taking us on our fun, all be it freezing, carriage ride!
We had the Joy school Christmas party at our house this year. Alexis was a shepherd and looked so sweet doing her part. All of the Joy school graduates helped out in the production!
Our cute group!! Mary and Joseph couldn't keep their eyes off each other. :)
Skylar and Nick had their piano recital. It was Nick's first recital and he did such a great job! Skylar played Do You Hear What I Hear? and Nick played Away in a Manger. They both did wonderful!
We went to Ben's family's Christmas party. It was fun to see family visiting from as far as Oregon and even Malaysia! Ben's baby brother, Jesse, challenged Ben to an arm wrestle...Ben won....for now...but he does have 21 years on Jesse! It's so great to be able to see Grandma and Grandpa Jordan, the only (great) grandparents we have living!
We did our traditional Jordan, Tong, & Hoen visit to the Festival of Lights!
It's always so fun to go see all of the fun lights and then head back to one of their houses for lots of snacking and fun games, which of course I don't have pictures of, but let's just say that if I did, you'd see some awesome dance moves! Such a fun Hordong Christmas tradition!
The kids had an entire week off of school before Christmas, which I thought would be great, but since I was such a slacker at getting ready for Christmas this year, we didn't have time to do much during the day....which was a total bummer when our kids were sick this week so we still didn't do anything!! We did make our gingerbread house and that was um, interesting! Let's just say there were tears and hurt feelings because everyone wanted it done "their way". Ahhh....kids!
One of the days, our friends, the Coxs, were nice enough to have my kids over while I did some last minute tasks. Their kids built a giant blanket fort and the kids had a blast playing in it!
Later we went to the Thanksgiving Point lights.
The Coxs brought their truck and when we got there, the brave ones piled in the truckbed so they could see the lights. It was sooooo cold and windy that night! I was more than happy to sit in the front with Heidi and little Lex where we were nice and toasty. The kids and the dads had fun all bundled in the back though!
On our way home we had our annual Christmas light scavenger hunt. The girls won of course! :) Plus we got to see this really cool BYU house! Our Cougar fans were in heaven! 
We barely got Santa's Christmas letters off to him this year. The kids had written them long before but we were slackers about getting them sent off. Good thing that Santa has elves to help out us procrastinators!
My poor family, I'm just not a baker...but Christmas cookies for Santa are the exception! They are a must have to thank him for his hard work! We had a fun time making them and decorating them!
Might I add that Alexis had a blast!!!
As hard as this Christmas has been, it has been good to be able to spend time with the kids enjoying the fun traditions we have and were able to continue. I've always loved this season, and despite the pain it holds, it still brings me joy to share these traditions and fun activities with my amazing kids!
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