Christmas 2013 in a nutshell

Our beautiful plump Christmas tree! It made our house smell wonderful!

Brie all festive in her Santa hat

Part of our advent calendar has activities for use to do as a family through the month. We had hot chocolate and listened to The Polar Express, we decorated a gingerbread train (as pictured here). We went to see the Christmas lights at the mall as well as Temple Square. We made Christmas cookies and wrote out Christmas cards. It is a very busy, but fun time of year!!

It was hard to keep them away from eating all the candy!

 Robert Frost Christmas Singing Concert

Brielle with her class singing Jingle Bells

Brielle & BF Macy

 Temple Square Lights

It was cold and crowded!! But a fun night together!

 Christmas Morning

Before the kids saw their presents we took a picture. We woke up around 8am.
We're sleeping in as long as the kids will let us.

Landon and his garbage play-dough truck

Our kids with their gifts. All smiles here!

Thanksgiving with EVERYONE!

I know this is not the greatest picture but this kind of shows how full our house was at Thanksgiving. We had both Jeremy's family and my family to our home. I believe we had 30 people. Some may say that is a little too many, and some may say that is just crazy, but really it was a fun and exciting day. Sure we had to remove some furniture-thank heaven's for good weather, & scramble to find enough chairs, but it was well worth it! I feel so blessed to have a home we can all squeeze into. It was definitely "the more the merrier" kind of situation. Everyone helped bring food, set up tables and chairs, clean up and do dishes. A few had to leave right after the pie was served and others stuck around for a few games. I was happy to create some fun memories, like I had growing up, with my kids. When I was growing up we all gathered at Grandma's house and there was always enough room. We as kids have so many great memories of Thanksgiving and the fun of being all together as a family. I hope to have many more just like this one!

Camron, Sharron, Jeremy, Heather, Me, Landon, Shane, Tia & Tani

Darrin, Michelle, Janet, Blaine, Tamara & Joe

Tamara & Joe

Grandpa Greenhalgh (his hand) & Jeremy's hand (my sister's Jeremy), Jonathan, Hannah, Heather, Julia, Tom, Diane & Larry

Diane & Larry (aka mom and dad & others in the background)

Grandpa Greenhalgh

Jeremy, Jonathan & Hannah

The kid's table
Brielle, Emery & Bailey

Kim & Tom

Tia, Tani & Camron

                                             

Here comes Halloween! {the beginning of the fun holidays!}

We Love Cornbelly's!

This year we went with our friends the Espinoza's.

Brielle, Landon and Mercedes

Arturo Jr and Landon trying out the slides. One of the favorite things to do there!

Waiting for the pig races to start.

Alex tackling the rock climbing wall

All dressed up for Halloween!!!

This is for the annual Turcsanski Family party

 Ariel aka Brielle didn't want to participate in our Despicable Me theme.

 Vector & Minion

 "Oh Ya!"

 I turned my little minion into a mini-Vector!

All candied out after trick-or-treating.

Leaf Fun!

We have one tree left in our front yard that produces leaves, and I would have to say a pretty fair amount for being deformed by the city tree chopping. Who can resist piling them up and jumping in them??? Not our kids! Oh & throwing them everywhere!

Fall Family Photos

We asked my sister Heather to take a few pictures of our family this past fall. We went out to Daybreak Lake and got some pretty good shots-especially for just being amateurs. I did send them off to my cousin that fixed them up a bit for us. I love having our family pictures taken! My husband feels differently, but he knows to expect them every year about this time. It is when I starting thinking about our family Christmas cards. One of my favorite things about the holidays is getting and sending out cards! Unfortunately it seems to be getting less and less important on the to-do list of others. Especially with technology, sending cards instead of emails is just too much work. I still appreciate getting "good" mail.

This was the picture I chose for our Christmas card.