Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The Magic of Christmas

We've had a lot of fun decorating for Christmas!
Including decorating each other!
Priceless!

Silver wraps things around her neck -so naturally a string of Christmas lights goes around her neck, this is what started it all!

Our nativity is one of my favorite things we own. It's a great tradition to bring it out every year just after Thanksgiving and set it up with River. River actually took this picture because she likes it so much. Baby Jesus gets moved daily from Mary's arms to the manger. River Loves holding Baby Jesus. She sings him lullabys and rocks him gently. This year she decided Jesus needed a friend (circled at left). Sometimes he gets to share the manger with Jesus, but mostly is another one coming to worship.
We have a beautiful CD with Christmas lullabys on it that plays pretty much non-stop all through the day. I love music in the background. Our girls are much more mellow with good calming music.

Colt's family has a tradition to give the kids an ornament every Christmas. When we got married, we had a whole box of ornaments to decorate our tree with! We use his ornaments every year. It is a fun tree! We have continued the tradition giving each child an ornament for Christmas, and also getting a family ornament each year. It's fun to pull them out and savor the memories. This is Colt telling River about his favorite ornament and when he was a little boy, he'd put this ornament in front of a Christmas light so the light would show through the glass.

All the ornaments go on one branch of course! We've had a lot of fun making snowflakes and paper chains too.
We cut some of the lower branches so River has her own little cave under the tree. Every morning she comes out and plugs in the tree. When it's quiet, I find River under the tree looking at the lights and the ornaments.
Ah, the magic of Christmas in a child's eyes!

Monday, December 14, 2009

That was so Excellent!

We Have SNOW!!
At the end of every sledding, River would say "That was so Excellent!"
Daddy and River going down a snowy bank.
Their sled: A couch cushion inside a plastic bag!
The first day of snow, the snow didn't pack together very well so we made a little snowman family with 4 tiny snowmen. After we got a good wet snow, Colt and River made Frosty. The day after our snowman was made it started to rain, he was gone by the next night.

River, Mommy and Silver went on the Polar Express - A yearly community event. They read to us the Polar Express Story and then we went on a hay ride around the town to look at lights. We ended up at the "North Pole" and met Santa Clause.
River was Really excited to see Santa, that is until he took a picture with her :)
River at the North Pole

Santa gave River a Bell - off of his Sleigh!


I love the snow! If I could choose where we lived, it would be Logan. Lots of SNOW!
Like a PENGUIN!!

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Fun Pictures

Time has gotten away from me this evening. I sat down at the computer once the girls went to sleep. My intentions were just for a few minutes, but the clock says 12:53. The time is precious without interruptions. I found some great software, and had a lot of fun tonight. The sketches are from my Kodak EasyShare software that came with our camera - it's the coloring page effect. The pictures are touched up with photoshop (photoshop.com - a free website). Here are some of my favorites:

River Fishing


River playing with leaves








Too much FUN!