Choir Concert

Larisa's show choir had a Christmas Concert! It was a lot of fun to go and listen to just her choir and hear the pretty pieces!

It was even more fun to watch Larisa! She is so animated when she sings. She gets along well with the girl that she stands next to and they make each other smile and giggle. After the choir sang, a few girls choose to do solos. I loved watching Larisa with a big group of friends support the soloist, by cheering and swaying to the music.

It is so fun to watch her become a happy teen and watch her enjoy the activities that she participates in!

Christmas Friend Family Night

When we first moved to Michigan, we didn't have much time to feel too homesick because of these sweet families who welcomed us and made us feel right at home! They are amazing families and they made the transition so much easier for us! We were all in the same ward for about 6 weeks and then I was put into another ward! I have really felt that I needed to move here when I did so I could meet these awesome families! This is the 3rd year that we have had a Christmas family evening at our house. We share traditions or Christmas stories, have hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls and enjoy visiting!

This is the Cook family. They welcomed us by inviting us over for dinner the first Sunday we were at church - they are awesome!!

The Staples family - The are such a kind and thoughtful family!

Lisa always sat by me in Relief Society! She would always look for me and I felt like I had a dear friend right away! She is such a sweetheart! Her family is singing a fun arrangement of a Star Wars song - it was so cute!!

The Statens invited over the 2nd week we were here!! Katie and I hit it off right away! She laughed at everything I said - if you know me , you know that's all that I need to go into performance mode! I thought she thought I was so funny and I was so proud of myself, then I learned that it's just Katie, she smiles and laughs all the time!!! They are an awesome family!!

The Thompson are such a sweet family she is such a huge help to me in my calling and they came for the first time this year!

You probably know these 2 cuties!! It is fun to see my girls go straight for the babies!!

This year after everyone shared their story or tradition the kids decided to do an encore!! It was a lot of fun watching them have fun performing!
Luke even did some break dancing for us!!

This is one the highlights of the holiday for us and I am so grateful for the blessing of good friends!

Gingerbread Houses!!

My girls love to make Gingerbread houses! This year I decided I would try making them from scratch instead of buying the kit. I learned a lot and will probably do it again next year! The girls have so much being creative and decorating!!This is a picture of Tiana's house. She knew exactly what she wanted to do! Her biggest request was to put on a pond - made of sucker syrup!This is Larisa's house! I love that she put bears doing cheer stunts on her pond!
It's hard to see the windows, but the are also made from sucker candy, we put a little light in the house, and it looks cool when you can see the light through the windows!

It was a fun project!!

Christmas with Friends!

We had our friends over for dinner and a Christmas celebration! We had a lot of fun together and enjoyed dinner! The girls all made up a skit for us! They seemed to be having a lot of fun together and we enjoyed watching them! Here is a pictures of Mary Joseph and the donkey!

Here is a picture of the mean cat in the skit - I told you they had fun!!

Now a reindeer!!

The Nativity scene!

Tiana is the shepherd and Anna and I are the sheep!!!!

It was a fun night!!

Blizzard Warning!

We had a blizzard and received some gorgeous snow!! I love it!! It was pretty and it gave an extra gift of the girls having 2 snow days!! When I look outside it looks like a Christmas Card to me!

I think winter is officially here!

Christmas lights!

One of my favorite things about Christmas is the lights!! I love the white bright lights best! I love that I get extra mileage with my lights in all of the reflections from my windows! We were having a beautiful snow storm and I loved sitting in my chair watching the snow and looking at all of the reflections!

I have some lights on 3 pines outside my sun room window and I LOVE looking at them covered in snow!

Work, Sing and Cheer!!

Chris has to work 2 Saturdays a year and or course it fell on the Saturday of the first cheer competition and Tiana's Choir performance! Larisa's competition was first! It went long!! She did a great job and her team took first place!! Yeah! The tricky part was I was driving the carpool and Tiana needed to be to the school for her concert!

Tiana got a ride over to the school with her friend Andrew, and his mom and I stayed at the competition! Our plan was to leave quickly and be there in time for the performance! Well, we left the older girls and found rides for them and ran to the concert!! We made it to the concert just in time for - - the band to play and missed her singing! I felt awful and wanted to bawl. I was hoping that maybe she didn't notice,-- but she did!!! She walked up and said, "You didn't make it - no one came to hear me!" Can you say GUILT TRIP!!! I assured her that I did everything I could and that I was so sad! She had her friend Andrew over to play, and I was hoping that it would be enough to make up! Tiana had fun playing in the snow while we were waiting for Larisa to come to the school from the competition!

Tiana had a great time playing and I thought all was well! Well, when Andrew left, the tears came on and we had a little chat about ALL of times I have made it to her games and performances and basically said I love you, but buck up!!! She brought home a note saying that they were having a choir party and showing a video of the performance. I snuck in to watch it with her and she said that made up for it and all is well now!!! Her songs were beautiful! There was a song in Hebrew that was just gorgeous!!

Wassailing

We had a great time Wassailing in our home town! We have been waiting for snow and it arrived just in time to go and be outdoors! It was beautiful! I love the town square and I love this old church! We had a lot of fun spending time together as a family!

They always have live reindeer to feed and come see!

Tiana's school choir were the performers for the evening! She joined in for a few songs! Can I tell you how impressed I am with this choir!! They meet once a week and they sound wonderful!! I love the director! She always chooses amazing songs! They sing a variety of music, but there are always a couple of songs that seem to speak to me!! I think my jaw literally fell to the ground when I opened her choir folder and found the song, "This is the Christ" by James E Faust! It made me cry and I read the words to my girls! Unfortunately, they ran out of time and I don't think they are going to learn it! It is a beautiful song and I was so excited to see it in the folder!! She sang a beautiful song in Hebrew about peace and is also going to be learning a Native American piece!

It was a fun filled night and I love this tradition every year at Christmas!

Thanksgiving!!!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving home together as a family!! We had a fairly relaxing day! Chris always makes the turkey, gravy and stuffing! I make the pies, rolls, potatoes and all of the other side dishes!! It works out well!! We put up the Christmas tree and started building Lego houses to build a village under the tree! At dinner time we went around the table and told what we were thankful for about each person! Everyone took their time and such sweet expressions were shared! We then each expressed different ways we were grateful for the gospel in our lives! I loved it and it was a special time for our family!!

Dinner was so yummy and everyone so sweet to express how much they enjoyed every thing! It makes it worth the work when you see people enjoy the meal!!

One of my favorite things was that the girls did the dishes!!! Way to go girls!!!
The girls helped me make pies! This is the Pumpkin Pie we made!
We also made a chocolate pie and a chocolate mint thigh pie! Our friends, the Rowleys, came over in the evening for a second round of pies! They brought their pies too and we had a huge selection!!! We had so much fun and they helped to fill the void of extended family! Thanks Rowleys!!
My family loved the jello (aka Party in your mouth) this year!! Larisa is so excited to have it again on Christmas!!!