Christmas Vacation!

Since Brad took off work a couple of days so that we could move right before Christmas, he ended up having a 2 week Christmas Vacation.  It was awesome and so wonderful!  We LOVED being in our new home for Christmas!  We were done with our Christmas shopping before we moved which helped so much.  We had a couple of days to unpack and then it was Christmas.

This year we spent Christmas morning at our own home for the very first time.  Brad and I have never spent Christmas morning at our own home in all our 11 1/2 married years.  It was wonderful!  We loved getting up just the four of us, eating our oatmeal, and then venturing in to the family room to check out our presents from Santa and from each other.  It was a very relaxed morning.  We had time to really check out and play with each gift after it was opened.  Did I mention that it was wonderful yet?

When Cade opened his tractor from Santa he said excitedly, "It just like Grandpa Godfrey's!"  He loves playing with Grandpa Godfrey's tractors when we visit.  I was very impressed that he remembered.

Aleah and Cade love their cameras.  They love taking pictures of things.  They will tell me, "Wait, let me take a picture" or "Sit here so I can take your picture"  The other day I wanted to take a picture of Aleah and Cade ran and got his camera.  He said, "Wait, I take picsure of Aleah too."  After he took the picture he said, "It's a good one.  Want to see?"  And it didn't take them long to figure out that there are also games on their cameras.

We got so much snow over the Christmas vacation!  It was beautiful and a lot of shoveling!  Aleah and Cade loved going out with Brad every morning, afternoon... to shovel.

After our nice relaxing Christmas morning we went over to my parents' house for brunch.  It was so much fun to get together with my whole family, we loved it!  We had our traditional crepes and then opened our gifts from each other.  We visited my Grandma Stone and then we hosted Christmas dinner at our house.  Our first dinner party was a success!


One evening during our vacation we took a trip up to Temple Square or "Square Temple" as Aleah and Cade call it.  It was a gorgeous night and not super busy!

 Aleah and Cade were looking forward to seeing the "activity", especially baby Jesus!

Our second dinner party was also a success!  We had our Stone cousin Christmas party a couple of days after Christmas.  It is always fun to get together with my cousins!

This year we made candy sleds and raced them down a cardboard box race track on our stairs.  We just happened to have a bunch of cardboard boxes laying around our house!  We split into three teams, constructed our sleds, and then raced them.  It was a lot of fun.  Not to brag, hehe, but my team's sled was the fastest!  

In the end it turned to more of a sled crash derby.  The guys were not satisfied with their crashed sleds until they dropped them off of my balcony!  It was funny, but really, I'm just glad that my tile didn't crack.  You have to give me a break on that one since we had only been in our home a week!

We found a great sledding hill right by our new home.  We had so much fun!  Aleah's favorite thing to do was to sled on her tummy without a sled.  She is so cute!

Aleah and Cade liked ridding down with us on our tummies.  Yes, there is a sled under there.

Aleah and I decided to try out the jump on our tummies.  It was fun until we landed, oh, ouch!

New Year's Eve was a blast!  My parents and my Grandma Stone came over.  Yep, our third dinner party!  We had our traditional steak dinner.  My Dad cooked the steaks perfectly!  We had a little count down with Aleah and Cade and some pumpkin pie.  This is what I get from Cade now when I say, "Smile!"

After Aleah and Cade were in bed we watched the new Batman movie, paused the movie to watch the ball drop at 10 (since we were not planning on stay up until midnight), watched some fireworks, watched the movie some more, didn't know that it was such a long movie, and ended up celebrating the New Year again at midnight!

We loved all the time that we got to spend together, all the time we got to spend with our family and friends, and all the time we got to spend in our new home!

My resolution is to spend more time studying the scriptures and reading the scriptures with Aleah and Cade.  I want to be close to the spirit so that I can receive the promptings that I need to be a good mom!  I want my kids to feel the spirit in our home and be able to talk to me about spiritual topics.  I know that the scriptures are true and that through them I can receive the inspiration and knowledge I need.  I'm so thankful for the time we had to celebrate the birth of our Savior!  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!