Before Christmas

The kids got out of school for the Christmas Holidays a little earlier this year, so we decided to go down to Loa to visit with Grandma Susan and Grandpa Bill. The kids love to go there. They have their own art totes that they enjoy using. We play ping pong and do puzzles. This trip Grandma also had Gingerbread people for the kids to decorate and one of the neighbors brought cute little reindeer rootbeers for the kids to enjoy. On Saturday night we went to the church Christmas party. There was a lady there who was talking to Drake and Garrett and asking them if someone really special would be coming to our house on Christmas Eve. Garrett said, "Yeah, Uncle Shay!" The lady looked a little shocked so Drake said, "oh, did you mean Santa?" It was so cute! I'm glad my kids look forward to having Uncle Shay visit. Of course, Uncle Shay does give them way better gifts than Santa.....Santa can't even really compete with the awesomeness of their uncle!

One of the reasons we went down to Loa before Christmas, rather than after, was because Grandpa was dying to get his present!  He got a really fancy camera that we all pitched in for.  Really, Tyson and I only bought him the battery, and a filter and maybe the lens cap.....the rest was all from Susan and Shay.  Tyson was in charge of making the purchase though since he is the camera guru. The rest of the weekend was spent taking pictures of everything and comparing Tyson's camera with Bill's. 

The guys also did some work on Zac's pinewood derby car.  The Derby isn't for another month but we thought we needed some of Grandpa's woodworking equipment so we got a jump on in.  Then Zac decided to go with a super simple design that we probably could have just done at home.  I'll do more on the Pinewood Derby later, but for now I'll just say that Zac has named his car The Wedgie!  Little boy humor is the best!

We drove through a snow storm to get home on Christmas Eve.  We were very glad to have a vehicle with 4 wheel drive and a dad who's not afraid to drive in bad weather.  We had planned to get Big Don's Pizza for Christmas Eve dinner, but for some crazy reason they were closed.  We hadn't planned on that, so we went for a pretty impromptu Nacho Bar dinner instead.  It was yummy!

And of course we had to do the traditional opening of one present on Christmas Eve.  I'm pretty sure the kids are on to us since they all already knew what the presents were.  They were still pretty darn excited to see their new pajamas though!  After they were all ready for bed we watched Elf and had popcorn.  Then the kids went to bed and Tyson and I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning getting Zac and Lexi's presents ready.