A Belated Christmas/New Year Post

I'm finally trying to catch up on our family news and thought at least try to hit the major holidays. This year we celebrated Christmas in Bountiful at our remodeling-in-progress home. We tried to get to Denver but that didn't work out and it turned out for the best in the end with all the snow and storms that hit. Midway through December we had breakfast with Santa along with cousins in Provo.

I was Ava's first chance to meet Santa and she was cautious and curious, and then it was time to get away from him.

After breakfast, Matt took the boys for a ride on David's motorcycle. They loved it.

Also in December, thanks to Matt and I not getting around to taking down the trampoline tarp thing, the boys discovered the trampoline is pretty fun in the snow, especially with it being so slippery.

On Christmas Eve, we did the Christmas Ball - use streamers to wrap treats and coins around a small ball and then the kids roll it to each other and get the treats that fall out - then roll around in the streamers after.

Before bed, Spencer and Jake put out chocolates for Santa and sugar cubes for the reindeer.

On Christmas morning, the boys woke up ready to tackle the living room dressed in jammies they got from Mont and Mary.

They were so excited and pretty soon the living room was covered in boxes and wrapping paper. Here they are with stuff from their stockings.

Ava felt horrible. Luckily, she didn't know she was missing out on anything.

One of the highlights was a skateboards and a ramp from G&G Bolen (ramp inside the box).

Later in the day Ava still felt crappy but tried to have fun with her new toys anyway.

A few days later we toasted in the new year with sparkling catawba, those popping streamer toys, games, and wrestling.

It was loads of fun, as you can see.

Ava's Turns One

Ava and Abe share a birthday on February 12. Here are a few pictures to celebrate the day (this picture was taken in the morning, read on for the rest of the story):




For Ava, it was like any other day: adoring fans trying madly to assess her needs and take care of them quickly. She gave smiles and many shouted "Hi!"s in return.

Ava met Barbie for the first time, though we don't much care if Barbie sticks around or not after today. It was fun for the cake. Ava was tentative at first and then had a grand time licking the frosting off her fingers.

I've decided all kid birthdays should ideally be celebrated in the first half of the day, preferably at breakfast. It's just about killed Spencer for a few birthdays running to have to wait until dinner for the party/present-opening/festivities to start. By the time the party hour rolled around, Ava looked like she was about to keel over, poor little kid.

Since she was barely hanging in there, we opened up her present from us--actually, it had never been wrapped because by now we've learned that one-year-olds just don't know the difference and we were lucky to get the cake done as it was. I put the toy together while Ava licked frosting and Matt supervised the boys eating dinner. A little multitasking goes a long way. Then we washed off the frosting and set Ava down to play. The boys liked the play wall as much as she did.
After that we did a speed-opening of the other presents and sent her to bed before she completely fell apart. It was a great day, but I have to say she had more fun with her presents the next day.