I have been trying to teach Karter the reason we celebrate Christmas this year. Karter being Karter this has been quite interesting. The first time I explained to him that we are celebrating Jesus' birth on Christmas he got upset and told me

"I don't want to go to heaven to go to his birthday party!"

It was a little hard not to giggle at that but he went on to ask what we should buy him for a present and I explained that we give gifts to Jesus in different ways; by being nice to others and serving people... He wasn't interested in that.

He said "No we had better go buy him something and we will keep it and take it to Him when we go to heaven."

Love the simpleness of a childs mind.

We hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas and that this next year brings you lots of happiness. There are many in our families who we are not able to be with this holiday...we love and miss you all! I wish we could always be together :( (Darn it! When did I turn into my mom and cry over everything.) Any-who...you know who you are that made me teary eyed. We love you!

This song is one of my favorites. It touches my little heart every time I hear it. I love it's message. Take a listen if you have a minute.

Merry Christmas!!

We recently spent a few days in Utah visiting friends and while we were there we had my friends sister in law take some family pics for us. I love her work so I was so exicted to have her do them.
Check them out on her blog.
Our pics start just after the little babies in overalls.

I must say that I have some stinking cute kids!!

Our ward(church) recently redid the entire stakes boundries and we now have a lot of new people in our ward who we don't know. The bishopric decided that we would do family pictures at the Christmas party and do a ward directory with a pic of the family so everyone could put a face to a name. Well....for some reason we didn't get ours done until we had been at the party for three hours and my children were completly done! I thought the pics turned out pretty funny...

We don't have a secret child my niece was with us and wanted to be in one of the pics.

Karter and Hud somehow managed to make similar faces but not the ones we were hoping for.

Karl decided to be the odd one in this.

A guy in our ward payed Karter $1 to smile.

I'm not sure if Hud is thinking what his actions are showing but it's pretty funny.

My friends and I have been busily crafting lately. We have made some super cute Christmas crafts and I had to share. They were so easy...that is if your aren't trying to make 25 in one night.
We made Christmas countdowns out of wood blocks. Add some scrapbook paper and modgepodge and you have a super cute little decoration. My kids obviously can't count yet so ours is usually a few days behind but I'm sure it will be well loved over the years.

After we spent the morning making our countdown blocks we headed on over to an awesome craft show. It was full of so much eye candy. I love places like that! We came across the cutest advent calendars for the kiddos and decided we needed to make them too. I loved the concept of this and thought I would get it posted early in case anyone out there in blogland decided they need one too.
It's super simple.

Get a muffin tin(I used a 12 count one) measure the holes and cut christmas paper to fit.
Add numbers 1-12 to each square. I would recommend using stickers for this step...we didn't.
Find some sheet magnets. We got ours from the big W in the office aisle. Measure and cut your magnets the same as your paper squares.
I modge podged the paper to the magnet then modge podged the entire front of the paper square with the number.
Add treats to the inside of your muffin tins and place magnet square over the openings.
You can add a bow and hang it or place it on a plate easel.
Uhh....SO cute! My friend found some online that were embelished a lot more than mine but since I'm not that crafty mine is a little on the plain side. But I'm still loving it!
The same friend found an idea to put a piece of paper with an activity for the day in some or all of the cups along with a treat. I have sat down and made a list and so far have 10 ideas. They are all cheap or free and I think it'll really help my little munchkins get into the fun Christmas spirit.

After my previous post about Karter I decided that Hudson Russell needed a little spotlight too.

He LOVES to wear hats...loves it! For Karter's birthday we had a cowboy themed party and everyone got a new hat. Hudson was elated since he had previoulsy had to beg, borrow or steal(the most common occurence) Karter's cowboy hat.

Karl and I saw this onesie in a store front window while we were in New York. I knew I had to have it for Hud. We didn't buy it at that moment though and that led to a little bit of an exersion later on trying to figure out where we had seen it. But we were successful in our search and it was well worth the hour walk it took to find it.

I mean really...the shirt says it all! The boots definatly seal the deal though!!