Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas including the following highlights: Hatch party with Santa Claus. Christmas eve at Oma and Opa's (minus driving through the blizzard in the minivan on the way up), Lots of yummy food and treats, and fun new toys. My best surprise was telling everyone that we are having a boy!

Las Vegas Bowl

We joined thousands of other Cougar Fans for a pre-Christmas road trip to Las Vegas for BYU's bowl game. We had fun staying at Kimberly and Robert's new home in St. George on Friday night. On Saturday, the whole family went down to Las Vegas and we stuffed ourselves at a buffet on the strip before the game. We were lucky to find a good babysitter in Las Vegas so that our kids did not have to sit in the cold. BYU was even luckier to win the game by blocking a last minute field goal attempt by UCLA. We rushed the field with hundreds of others to celebrate. GO COUGARS!

Christmas Cookies

We had a fun cookie making and decoration party here a few weeks before Christmas. We had large gingerbread boys and girls, sugar cookies, and I made a garland with some of the smaller gingerbread men. (I felt like the "elf" when hanging up the garland.) We froze a few cookies to decorate on Christmas eve for Santa. A few days later, the kids and I decorated a gingerbread house.

Here is a good tip for gingerbread houses my neighbor told me: If you don't ever plan on actually eating the house, then first decorate each piece of the house. Then assemble the house together with a hot glue gun. This held great and was very easy. We covered up some of the hot glue with our extra frosting.

Thanksgiving

We had a great thanksgiving feast at Oma and Opa Wirthlin's house. Every dish that was there was delicious. Dad made the best smoked turkey. I had a lot of fun cooking for 2 days before Thanksgiving, I made the following dishes: fresh cranberry chutney, rolls, sourdough bread, pumpkin pies, oreo custard pie, spinach artichoke dip, stuffing, and I also made 2 dozen bagels to have around the house.

We were so glad that Suzanne and Scott came for Thanksgiving and stayed with us. Abby and Alexandra had fun going to the same church class and wearing their matching Costco dresses. They were lucky to be here for a big snow storm the day before they left to go back to sunny Arizona.