Happy Christmas!

Mom and Dad are still mystified by our Christmas morning behavior. Mom seems to be the one waking US up each year!

Once again our tricky Santa left us a clue and sent us on a  treasure hunt all over the house. Mom does have video of it and we'll see if she can get it uploaded.

However, we also have a picture of the exact moment Cara realized what Santa had left us.

A WII U! Cara was the most fervent in her desires for this game console, but we were all pretty excited. 

Iva was a little bit bleary eyed and kind of out of it for most of the morning, but Santa came through for her and left her a pink candy cane just like she asked. 

Sam also thought the candy canes were awesome and tried to eat them all through the plastic.

The glorious aftermath.

We were done with presents fairly early because it was a Sunday and we had 9 am church!  We were slightly unkempt but we made it! Mom was surprised at how many people were there and on time!

Here is a picture of Mom's favorite gift from Dad.

This year's Sunday picture by the tree was done at Grandma and Grandpa's.

We had to take a picture of Logan and me because we were twinners!!

After church and playing at Grandma's, we spent lots of time setting up the Wii. You can use a picture to help create your Mii. Most of the time it left us crying we were laughing so hard. You felt slightly insulted with what it came up with. Sam's, however, was just the best. Look at those cheeks!

Later that night, we went back over to Grandma and Grandpa's and Cara and I got our first ever Pounce lesson. This is a beloved card game in the Larsen family. Most people call it Nertz, I think, and the rules are slightly different. It was hard, but we had fun!

Christmas Eve

We started a new tradition for Christmas Eve that I think we are really going to like! Last year, we went to Denny's with Aunt Angie for breakfast. So we did it again! Who doesn't want a Rudolph pancake?! It was kind of a cold drizzly morning, but we were nice and cozy. This year was much better too because no one got sick and lost their breakfast on their way out of the restaurant. (That was Cara last year!) 

Mom had to work at Red Mountain and teach her classes after breakfast which meant we had a very low key kind of a day. We played around the house and just generally waited for 4 pm when the festivities at Grandma and Grandpa's house could start!

We headed over there and waited on pizza by playing a few games and just generally hanging out. We had our usual traditions. Pizza and jacuzzi. It was a little strange though because Aunt Angie and Uncle Marty weren't there so we were the only grandkids!

As we got out of the jacuzzi, Aunt Becca discovered this roadrunner who had taken up residence on a light under the deck. It was kind of scary because it didn't appear to be moving and no one had seen it until we were all getting out. It eventually moved like two days later, but for a little while we were afraid it was dead!

After the jacuzzi, we headed upstairs and opened our new jammies! Taking a picture with Sam went really well as you can see.

Ahhh. There we go. Finding Dory and Monster's Inc pjs!

Mom and Dad even got new jammies. Dad's were just the bottoms. They seem really comfy though. And we all love Mom's jams because they came with a sleep mask that looks like Minnie!

We headed home quickly so that we could set out our cookies for Santa and get in to bed before he skipped our house! We are surprisingly good at going to bed. Sam and Iva went down fairly easily and then I claimed I wasn't going to sleep, but Mom and Dad tell me that I was out before 11 pm.

Christmas Eve Eve or Christmas Adam

This year Christmas was on a Sunday which meant that there was this awesome Friday night for Christmas Eve Eve where you felt like you had to do something!

We decided we should have a fun special dinner and use our fun dishes. Mom and I had picked this plan early in the afternoon, but by dinner time Mom was exhausted. She had gotten up very early and didn't feel like cooking. She wanted to go pick up Panda Express on the way home, but I was insistent that we do spaghetti like we had talked about. We actually got in a fight about it at Grandma's house. I was crying and Mom was frustrated and Grandma just felt bad for everybody. I was only crying because Mom wasn't sticking to the plan and was kind of making me feel bad about it. (Which I think made Mom feel even more tired and feel bad also!) Dad was kind of stuck in the middle. I don't think anyone really knew what the right thing to do was.

We ended up making spaghetti at home like had planned, but Dad swung by Harmon's and grabbed us some garlic bread which I think cheered everyone up.

We also talked Mom and Dad into letting us use their tub for a giant bath. Sam still doesn't love bubbles. They seem to make him nervous and he was a slippery, falling mess the whole time. The bath didn't last long because of it.

As a side note, Mom was spoiled by the members of her gym. They are very sweet and generous to her with little treats and some money even!

Class parties and trips to the dentist...

Leading up to Christmas, I think, as a kid is much more magical. My mom still had to work and do grown up things. She tried really hard to make sure we did special Christmasy things like having hot chocolate whenever possible, but it's still hard. For example, we had our class parties for school on the same day as our dentist appointments. Not so much fun!

Mom is the room mom for Cara's class so she always helps in there. Which means, of course, that we don't have any pictures from my party, but a few of Cara's!

There was this awesome game of ring toss on the reindeer antlers! Even Iva wanted a turn!

After school, we promptly went over to the dentist office. Cara and I love the dentist. So much. We were very excited that we got to go a little early. Iva, however, is still quite scared of the dentist. When we arrived, she kept telling Mom that she was going to have her teeth counted later. But not today. She kept shaking her head and saying it so matter of factly. She kind of clung to Mom which was super fun considering she also had Sam clinging to her. Cara and I had our X-rays done and our cleanings before they even attempted doing something for Iva, but her turn came. She started panicking a little and started to cry pretty loud, but Mom got her squared away and showed her how awesome the movie was. Once she kind of figured out the whole watching a show thing, she even let them do X-rays! It was amazing and awesome and we are so proud of her.

The one bummer thing was that I had a couple of cavities. They even decided to give me a silver tooth. I was brave about it though and handled the dental work like a champ!

The weekend before Christmas

Holy cow...we are very very behind on our blog. That's okay. We are planning to post date all of this so you may never know how truly far behind we are. Except we just said it. Oh well.

Our van has needed new tires since probably October. I believe they told Mom about it in September and we have been to California and SLC since then. Oh dear. We were planning on trying to sneak up north the weekend before Christmas, but then there were storms that left most of the freeways in Utah covered in snow and some ice and Mom decided it wasn't worth the risk. However, Dad's friends were having a party and they very much didn't want us to miss it. What to do? Mozzy to the rescue! Who would have thought our Prius would be the safer winter car? Unfortunately, Mozzy only seats five of us and so we had to leave some people behind. Mom stuck around in St. George with the two littles and us bigs went with Dad.

Mom and the littles spent some time cuddling in bed. In fact, I think this photo was taken at like 9 in the morning. It was heavenly from what Mom said.

She got them all dressed all snazzy and Christmasy for church and they just looked too cute not to take pictures. 

Everyone was smitten with Iva and her dress. The funny part is that it took all of Mom's energy to convince her to even wear the dress!

Dad did not take any pictures of us up in SLC. He's not much of a photo taker. We had fun at the Millers house and seeing our friends. We also loved hanging out with the Preslars even though it was only for the briefest of times. We at least slept at their house!

Oh and one last picture of the Mom and Littles adventures. A three way face swap!

Pete's Work Party

Guest post by Mom:

I don't know if I ever fully followed up with our hard post back in March about Pete losing his job and feeling lost and not really have any strong leads. If you hadn't noticed, we didn't move from St. George. Pete was able to get a job with a friend's company here in town as their business manager. Initially he was just going to be helping out Flitch with bookkeeping and some sales while we kept looking, but then the manager position opened and it fit. So Pete is the business manager for Flitch Creative, a graphics design and website company!

Okay back to the real reason for the post. It's a small company so the party was pretty casual but they were having an ugly sweater contest and for some reason I was really in the mood to go big. So this is what we came up with....

We shaved a snowman in to Pete's stomach hair!

My sister first donned this sweater last year! It's so fun!

The party ended up being just a little bit anticlimactic with a couple of the employees not fully participating or coming, but Pete and I still had a great time.

Warm Weather? Maybe?

It felt like for most of December we had pretty mild weather! Of course we are typing this up in the middle of January and it feels almost impossible to remember. However we have these photos which were taken at that new awesome park. We don't have jackets on and we are playing in the freezing water which means it must have been warm, right?!

Boy does Sam love to be outside. I think he would have gone swimming if Mom had let him!