The past week has been full of Christmas-y goodness! On Saturday, we went up to my Uncle Mark and Aunt Debbie's house where we've our annual candy house making extravaganza for as long as I can remember. I haven't been in seven years, so it was a bit of trip to take the kids, but the good memories came flooding right back. I wish you could smell the wonderful smells of these pictures: wood-burning stoves, hot soup and rolls for lunch, and LOTS of treats!

This is a view from my left:


And from my right:


I expected Connor to go a little wild with his candy ingestion, but this kid never ceases to surprise me with his enthusiasm! After about 20 minutes of eating treats hand over fist (including licking the sugar "mortar" on his graham cracker house), I just had to get him down from the table and distract him while the others finished up.


Candy houses are always followed up with sledding. I can't remember a year up there where there wasn't sledding since Mark and Debbie's house is so close up to the mountains that they lose the sun completely from November to February.


On Sunday, we braved the elements to meet up with the Carliles for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert. It was absolutely wonderful, and both Anthony and I enjoyed every minute of it (well, except for the part where I found out that a DSLR's lens can hide bombs and lost my place in the security line, thus being separated temporarily from my party)! Thanks again, Carliles! By the time the concert let out, the rain had turned to wet snow and we had fun watching cars attempt to get up the hill out of the parking lot. Don't let this picture deceive you; it was dumping snow!


Merry Christmas! Only nine more days!

It's been bitterly cold here for the past week (according to weather.com, it now feels like 2 degrees) and Connor has been a bit under the weather, so we stayed home and indoors yesterday and today. Filling the time with two littluns who would rather be doing ANYTHING but staying put is a bit daunting to say the least!

Today was passed with cleaning, baths, a Thomas the Tank Engine dvd, play dough, coloring, playing cars, building block towers, watching videos of trains and family on YouTube, snacks, and lots of whining.

The bright spot of the evening came at Connor's bedtime. Not feeling well + refusing naps = one tired little boy. He fell asleep on me while I was rocking him (so rare) and about five minutes after he fell asleep, he sat straight up, looked at me with sleepy eyes, put his finger up his nose, then laid back down. Ahh, two year olds.

Our December is jam-packed with fun, festive activities. It's only the 9th and we've had our Broadhead Christmas party, seen the lights at Temple Square, and attended cousin Ava's birthday party. In the next ten days, we've got Candy Houses (it's capitalized because it's an all-encompassing term for an extended family get-together, making candy houses, lunch, and sledding in the mountains), the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert with Blake and Mary Ann, and a flight to Denver for a long Christmas vacation! Hooray!

On Monday we went downtown to see the lights at Temple Square. 29 degrees made for a bundled up Lainy.


We started the night with an ever-so-healthy stop at McDonald's. It's the only place where we can meet and ALL of our children will eat. Terrible. :)




Connor was way more interested in the fountains and pools than the lights.