Santa at the library

The Springville library had a Santa come to the library and take pictures with the kids for free. On Saturday morning we went with the boys and grandma and grandpa to see Santa. The boys did awesome! Liam was fascinated with Santa and just wanted to pull on his beard. Daniel thought it was fun to sit on his lap and didn't want to talk but he was smiling. He just said yeah when Santa asked if he was ready for Christmas. It was great!

Festival of Lights

This year we are staying in Utah for Christmas. This means we get to do lots of new things but I also miss going to the festival of lights in James Island. So this year we looked around Utah for a fun alternative that was fun but also inexpensive. We found a little festival of lights in Spanish Fork. It was on a golf course and we couldn't get out but it was cute and fun to go see lights.

First Santa visit

We had our ward Christmas party at the beginning of December. We had a great time eating yummy food, talking to good friends and watching some very talented people perform for us :) The night ended with a visit from Santa. This was Liam's first time visiting Santa and he did great! Daniel was great too and was happy to sit on his lap. (They obviously didn't inherit the 'santa is scary' gene from me) Santa wasn't wearing his customary red pants and we couldn't get the boys to actually smile but I say no tears is a win!

Living Nativity

The second day of our advent calendar we planned to go visit a living nativity in Orem. It was a cold night but we bundled the boys up and it was really fun. The people doing the nativity looked so cold! They had hot apple cider though which helped. They had animals but Daniel's favorite part was the big fountain by the nativity with Christmas colored lights.

Never seen a camel this close before

This was a great way to start off our month of Christmas celebration!

Thanksgiving

This year we celebrated our first Thanksgiving without any other family, it was just the 4 of us. At first I was sad because it would just be us but it was awesome! No one to impress and no arguments and no expectations of others. We could do whatever we wanted when we wanted. It was great! We planned to have a duck since we don't like turkey.

The day before Thanksgiving we planned to make our desserts. Daniel helped me make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. I was worried because cookies I make don't usually turn out well. These were amazing though! They were so fluffy...like eating clouds. Dan was a pretty good helper too. My dad said it reminded him of when I would help him make cookies.

One of our Thanksgiving traditions is to do a huff and puff before we stuff. This was Liam's first Thanksgiving so it was fun to go as a family of 4. It was a little cold but we got all bundled up and then walked around our apartment complex with a couple different people who we kept going past.

We don't like turkey in our house so we did a duck this year! It was delicious! Mike did a great job. We had some of the other traditional things and we also had lots of pie! Daniel did really well with dinner which surprised me. He loved the duck and of course loved the rolls.

We had a wonderfully relaxing Thanksgiving. We had fun talking about what we're thankful for. Dan is thankful for mom, daddy and teddy :)

First snow

We finally had our first snow of the year. It wasn't Daniel's first snow but it was the first that he will remember. It was Liam's first snow though. Daniel loved running around in the snow and throwing it in the air. Liam wasn't impressed but to be fair he didn't do anything with it. He'll have lots of time to get used to it though. I'm sure this will be the first snow of many this winter :)