Friday, January 20, 2017

What I'll Remember About 2016

When I think about 2016, the things that I'll remember most are...

-Eli going to Sunbeams (no blog post)













-Sean helping his dad move from Washington to St. George

-Ruby going to nursery (no blog post)
















Christmas Break and New Years in St. George

Christmas Break went by way too quickly.
We spent most of it at home, together as a family.
The kids loved having lots of play time.




The house smelled like Christmas.


I loved seeing our house lite up by the Christmas trees every night.


Sean put a projector in our front room. It kinda looked like snow on the ceiling.


Here's a picture I snapped of Ruby with my father-in-law when he came to visit. 
She warmed up to him real quickly. She loved sitting on his lap.


Lexi helped me do some baking. Here she is making the icing for our gingerbread houses.


This was our second year in a row making homemade gingerbread houses. 
They are a little bit of work but a fun tradition.


Lexi and Avery decorated one house. And Sean and Eli and Ruby decorated the other.
And I was in charge of icing.



He took our annual family nativity picture.


The kids were the cutest wise women.


We ate lots of homemade donuts for a few days after Christmas Eve.
Ruby loved the donuts the most.


We used the Christmas money we got  from my in-laws to buy the kit for our swing set.
Here we are at Home Depot buying it. Eli loved that they had to use a fork lift to get it.


We went sledding with two families from our ward over the break.
It was Ruby's first time sledding and she loved it.





Here's Avery running over Lawsen Hansen.



Here's Eli riding with our neighbor Jen Hansen. He loves her.



Ruby took a little break from sledding to give Sean a rest.
There was a park at the bottom of the hill.






For New Year's weekend we went to St. George to my in-laws house.
Four of the six Christensen kids were there with their families.
It was so fun being all together.


They were still decorated for Christmas.
And Nana gave all the kids their Christmas gives the first night.


They all got their tradition matching jammies.



We went to the temple one morning just to walk around.





I forgot to straighten this next picture. 




The kids had a great time playing with their cousins. I'm so happy that they are all such good friends.


The big girls all slept in the living room together. They loved having a sleepover every night.


We played games, of course.


Sean made us fried chicken one night for dinner. It was a lot of work but it was amazing!


On New Years Eve we had activities for the kids to play every hour leading up until midnight.
The activities that I remember were playing Pie Face, Nerf gun target practice, doing fireworks, playing a balloon tag game, swimming and a game with silly string. The kids loved it all!


The kids loved Pie Face!












We sneak attacked Josh while he was on the phone. It was hilarious. And he was surprised.


Half of the kids, all the older ones, made it up until midnight.
And so did Sean and I.


We went to the field by my in-laws house several times.
The kids loved being outside.




The kids had fun playing with their grandpa's new drone.


Ruby loved just wondering around the backyard.




The highlight of the trip for all the kids was probably swimming.
The pool was heated to 90 degrees so it felt like a warm bath.


Here's an action shot of Justin doing a back flip into the pool.



Here's Devin jumping in.



Here's Avery.




And Lexi jumping in. Can you tell that I love action shots?



Next is Parker.



There's Sean's dad making a splash.


Justin loved throwing the kids around. Or at least they loved it.








The hot tub was also a huge hit.


It was so fun being all together, I hope it isn't too long before we can do that again.