Christmas Eve Traditions

Carrying on my parents tradition, we invited a ton of people over on Christmas Eve for potato soup and a table full of desserts.

I think the highlight for me was when one of the Cannon's boys walked into the dining room and said "This must be what it looks like when you get to heaven!".

The girls used left overs from the party for Santa and celery for the reindeer.

We read the Christmas story in Luke, then the girls all got to open their new jammies and head to bed.

The express christmas tree

Because we were on vacation the beginning of December we ended up not buying our tree until the 17th of December. It was technically my year to choose the tree, but I let the girls choose.

It was Lucy's turn to put the star on the top and since it was about 12 ft tall, she was very brave to climb up to do it.

By 2pm Christmas day Eric had all the ornaments cleaned off the tree and the tree completely dismantled and sitting in out burn pile out back.  It really felt like an express Christmas this year.

Merry Christmas!

Keaton

Lucy's obsession

If you have been around Lucy for any length of time over the past 2 years then you know that she LOVES pandas. She has panda everything and wants everything panda. She has been asking to go to China to see real pandas. So since we were in southern California we decided that we really needed to make it down to the San Diego zoo. We had heard horror stories about how crowded it usually is, but we were lucky and practically had the zoo to ourselves.

Most importantly Lucy got to see real pandas... up close and personal. They were even cuter then I had imagined they would be.

We even got to hold baby pandas...with the help of photoshop :)

Disneyland

Since we moved away from California Eric has been having withdrawls for Disneyland.  We found an awesome Disney package deal that we couldn't pass.  Eric talked to his brothers and it quickly turned into a family reunion.  We did not want to have to deal with big crowds so we all pulled our kids out of school and went the 1st week of December. It was perfect timing.

The four guys on the back row are Eric and his brothers (Eric, Greg, Alan and Wayne).  I still can't believe that at 6' 3" Eric is the shortest of his brothers. 

It really worked out well. All the cousins got along great.

Even though Eric and his brothers used to not be so kind to each other growing up, they all had a great time together.

My good friend Nicole and her kids met us at the park. I miss her so much!

Ruby could not wait to see Ellie. They were inseparable. 

Can you spot Keaton in this photo, Lucy was helping him out :)

The Sharps

On our way down to Disneyland we got to visit with the Sharps. When we lived in California we spent tons of time with the Sharps. We carpooled, swam and got together almost every day. It was heart  breaking to move away from them but so much fun to get to visit them again. My girls asked if they could skip Disneyland and spend more time with them. We love you guys! 

The Festival of Trees

My friend Jill and I were in charge of the santa's sleigh for the Festival of trees. We went with a sports theme and purchased the toys last January when Target had all their toys 75% off. Eric made the goal posts and football field for us. Our budget for the toys was $400 and it sold for $3,000!!!! All the toys were donated to a local charity.