Christmas in Utah!

We were lucky enough to surprise my parents this year for Christmas. We decided (almost last minute) to head up to Utah. My parents had no clue we were coming! It was so great, I have always wanted to do that and I finally got my chance to surprise them. My whole family was able to be together for a couple days which is always awesome! The kids had a blast playing the entire week we were there!

Making gingerbread houses. As always they were COVERED with candy.

Random pictures: Eating out at one of our favorite places in St. George. Playing at Jumping Jacks and Sam and Haiven.

Christmas Eve. The kids were so excited and could hardly wait to open some presents.

Christmas morning: Carly and Sam were so different in the way they reacted. Carly couldn't open things fast enough and Sam took his time opening and looking at each gift. Santa Clause left a note with a picture of Bicycles that he left at our house in Texas. They were pretty excited about that!

Carly and I on Christmas day.

We snapped this picture after Church. It's nice going to church on Christmas. It helps me at least keep the true meaning of Christmas on my mind.

Mark and Desirae and family came down Christmas day, so that night we did the Nativity, it was pretty funny.

Christmas Morning

Random pictures: Chad playing horse, sleepover with some girl cousins and Carly and Haiven.

small Christmas Tree

We finally got our Christmas tree up. Funny thing: I just had Chad pick one up from the grocery store this year (I really wasn't up for the overpriced-cut down your own- Christmas tree this year) Well, he walked in the back door with it and the second Carly saw it she said "It's okay that it's small Daddy." It was pretty funny. Last year we had like a 9ft. tree. This year it seems about half that! The kids still had fun decorating it!

I was also crazy enough to make sugar cookies this year. I must admit, they are far better than the one's I made last year. I ended up with 5 1/2 dozen. 3 dozen of those were for a cookie exchange party. The rest we had to pawn off to people because I was sick of looking at them!