Christmas Trees, Concerts, and December Fun

We love going to Coates Christmas tree farm. It is beautiful, and the kids love it. And free hot chocolate and Santa are a bonus! We took a hay ride around the property to scout out the trees to start things off....

Brandon found the winner this year. It's harder to tell how tall it really is when it is trimmed up from the ground like that. We estimated that it would fit in our house just fine. Things always look much smaller when they are outside. Brandon wanted to cut it down all by himself!

The girls made sure that people driving in knew which way to go

Posing like a tree

I think he's breaking a sweat!

Victorious at last!

Another year, another Christmas tree success.

Lindsey and Katelyn had such a fun time taking a little ballet class in the fall with their friends Karissa and Brynlee. Here they all are with their teacher, Ms. Ann. They loved her and both earned their pink "ballet belt." They were very proud, and are sad that we're done with ballet now.

And thank you to Katelyn for this next montage. She took my camera and took lots of pictures of Christmas from her point of view. So here are a few.....

And here is Dylan at preschool making a gingerbread house. Justin worked from home that day so that he could be there.

And here is Miss Katelyn at her school Christmas show. She looked kind of nervous as she waited for it to start.

Here is our cutie singing "Up On the Housetop"

Here are my silly kiddos!

And here is Brandon after his first band concert with his band teacher. They have learned a lot in the last couple of months! He is playing the trumpet. And can I just say.....quit growing up so fast!!

This "guy hug" makes me giggle!

Here he is playing a solo at his concert.

And here is our family performing a rousing rendition of Jingle Bells at our Ward Christmas Party. Someone got thirsty backstage before our number and drank some of the water in Katelyn's glass. So her not is WAY off. I think it's so cute that she knew it was off!

Thanksgiving Fun

We had a great Thanksgiving this year....just our family! It was very laid back and relaxing, which is just what we needed. Justin has been super busy this Q4 at Amazon and we needed some quiet time together.

Here is an awesome castle that Dylan built

And we went to a little program that Dylan put on with his preschool class mates. It was so cute!

Dylan eating his Thanksgiving feast at preschool

Here is Dylan teaching Weston what big boxes are for

And here are the big kids and I making home made pies for Thanksgiving.

It takes a lot of muscles to roll out the dough!

Here we are Thanksgiving morning. The kids were busy making turkey name tags for everyone while I whipped up our Thanksgiving meal.

Each kid was pretty proud of their unique turkeys

Brandon used his origami skills to make this turkey with a monster beak!

Justin helped Dylan with his

And here was the feast!

Happy Thanksgiving!

It was a gorgeous sunny day, so after we got over the afternoon sleepiness from all that turkey, we went to the park

The kids loved trying out the tennis skills

We played some games, and ate pie! Yum!

And here is the puzzle that we finished the next morning. The girls helped out a lot with it.

Here is Lindsey showing off the cute turkey pine cone she made at Activity Day Girls

And here is the lovely mess that (mostly) Weston made with the new toilet paper from Costco. :)

What a fun weekend!

Brandon's Dance Concert

We really enjoyed going to Brandon's dance concert at the end of November. It was Christmas themed, and everyone did a great job! His dance team did a Hawaiian dance which was awesome! He even got to jump on the back of another boy to pose at the end of the song. I was sad we couldn't video tape it though.

Here is Brandon with his friend Makayla

And here we are after the show celebrating with some Dairy Queen treats

Weston loved sampling all of the different flavors. Yum!