Our Christmas Week

This kid would live outside if we let him. It has been so amazing having Derrick home Have I mentioned that yet? :) Those two went out and played in the snow a lot this last week, at Hayden's request. He stands and points at the door saying, "snow!?!" which sounds more like, "no?!" Sometimes he brings us his snowboots. So Derrick takes him outside and they walk around the neighborhood. Derrick made a slide in our back yard, but Hayden kept getting stuck so we put him in a garbage bag.
On Monday for FHE we made gingerbread houses. I was planning on learning how to make gingerbread and making one from scratch, but lets be honest, I wasn't planning on standing around in a hot kitchen all day making stuff. We are lucky if we get dinner these days. On a funny side note, if I do any cooking then I take our bar stool in the kitchen and sit on it while I cook because I just can't stand that long.

So we bought a kit from wally world. It turned out really fun anyway. We just let Hayden go to town on the candy which he loved. He didn't even try to eat it! This is a picture before we were quite done, but I forgot to take one afterwards. Just picture this with a ton more candy and frosting. Derrick did the candy row on the top of the roof. Cute huh?


On Christmas Eve we... did some stuff. I can't really remember what we did in the morning. Cleaning maybe? Anyway, after a while we had to run some errands and ended up at the mall afterwards to see if Santa was there. This was Hayden's first time meeting him. I'll be honest, I was hoping for a crying picture like the kid in front of us. :) But Hayden just started at him and then tried to get down. It was cute. He was happy after he got the candy cane though.


Then we went home and had a nice Christmas Eve dinner. After that we read the story of the nativity out of the Bible and the signs of his birth in the Book of Mormon. We used a little paper nativity scene that we got out of the Friend for Hayden to play with while we read, but he was very uncooperative anway. Then it was time to open the Christmas jammies! I think they are pretty cute, although they are big. Good thing I didn't get any for Halle.


You even have to brush your teeth on Christmas Eve!Then we attempted to put him to bed while we watched a movie. It soon became apparent that he wasn't going to stop crying so we brought him down with us and he fell asleep in Derrick's arms. He had been pretty naughty the few days before, so I think that even though he didn't really know about Christmas he could feel that something was different and was just acting weird. I think he just couldn't sleep! It's not what we were expecting though because he usually goes to sleep so well... at least lately.

So then Derrick and I got Christmas ready for the morning, which was really fun. We had never done it before since we were always visiting family. This year was so different because it was just the three of us, but it was so fun! I love having our own traditions and being our own little family. I wouldn't mind doing it this way every year (although I think our parents would disagree.) More on Christmas morning later!