Pre-Christmas Festivities

It has been a wonderful Christmas holiday break.  I'm sad that it is coming to a close.  We have really enjoyed the time off of school/work, and spending time with family.  We stayed in Las Vegas for Christmas.  All of Tom's siblings (minus the twins on missions) were here with us as well.

It felt a little more like fall with all of the leaves that have blown off the trees lately, but tis the life of living in the desert.  We enjoyed having cousins come visit!

It has been cool, overcast and occasionally rainy lately...and I have been loving it!

Grandma Polley got some snowflake cookie cutters to make sugar cookies with the grandkids.  Everyone enjoyed getting to take a turn.

I love this little girl's smile so much, and I love when I can actually catch it on camera when she's actually looking at the camera!

Dancing while watching her reflection in the oven doors

Ian (reluctantly) allowed Grandma to help him cut a cookie so I could take a picture.  I had to help him all the other times.

Playing the hand-stacking game with Aunt Ann

Kaybri's turn

Ann really loved the snowflakes (they were later frosted, and Ann mostly just licked off the frosting and hardly touched the cookie).

Watching Grandma move the cookie to the baking sheet

Later that day while eating her cookie, Ann's first loose tooth came out!  She was so excited to have the tooth fairy come and bring her some money.  Her other front bottom tooth is loose is as well, so we'll see how long before that one comes out too.

On Christmas Eve we all piled into two cars and headed down to the Bellagio to look at the decorations in the atrium.  There is always a big, beautiful Christmas tree.

Floating polar bear!  The neat thing about these decorations is that they are made of flowers!

I tried to get a nice picture of David and Ann, but it was accidentally photo-bombed :)

A train was moving around on a track through this bed of flowers

In the middle of the train track were these two giant snow-globes and a jack-in-the-box

Ann and Tom watching the train go around

Ian got to ride in the stroller because it was so crowded there.  This was my attempt at getting a picture of the two kids.  There was so much to look at that it was hard to get them to look at the camera.

My sweet, darling boy

Giant Christmas ball ornament

A closer shot of the back-side of the Christmas tree

This beautiful "picture" of a snow-covered house at night (there is a moon in the sky, but you can't see it in the picture).  All made of flowers/nuts/sticks/evergreen needles.

After looking at the atrium we visited the gelato shop in the Bellagio.  Ian and I saved seats while everyone else ordered food/ice cream.

He is just too cute

Kreed laughing when he noticed the camera was pointed in his direction

Ann and Kaybri

Ian leaning across the table towards me

I asked Tom to take a picture of me to prove that I actually exist and was there :)

Making silly faces for the camera!

Sitting and chatting

Jill feeding something to Kinley.

Thanksgiving

Alright, it's the day after Christmas and I'm finally able to sit down and blog about Thanksgiving!  Ha!  Hopefully it won't take me forever to get everything about Christmas up!

We had a great Thanksgiving this year.  Ann had the full week off of school (I still had to work on Monday and Tuesday).  My parents came down the Saturday before and stayed for a full week.  My sister Janelle came down from Provo on Wednesday and stayed until Saturday.  It was so great to spend time with them.

I think this is just going to be one long post instead of a few smaller ones (just to ensure this gets posted!)

My parents haven't been to Las Vegas since Tom and I got married 7.5 years ago (and were only here for the wedding so we didn't get to show them around here at all).  So we made sure to take them out to see Calico Basin (where I frequently go with the kids).

We climbed up on the rocks a little bit (which is super easy to do as the rocks are made of sandstone and grip well with shoes).

We loved having my parents here!

With the cute grandkids!

My dad was being silly to make Ann and Ian laugh and smile

We also walked around the boardwalk

My mom stayed behind with the slower Ian while my dad walked ahead with the faster Ann

Another picture, mom?  Really?

It was getting cool enough that the leaves were finally changing color!  Finally made it feel and look like fall.

Ian is just too cute for words.  There is apparently an acorn bush/tree across the street from us and Ian and my dad were often over there collecting acorns.  He stash was placed near that column on the front porch.  It's still there a month later.

Showing off his acorns.  He was pretty excited that they found a green one.

My lovely sister who willingly posed for me since the light was so beautiful outside

Ian was willing to sit with me for pictures (Ann was inside playing).

This kid loves his mommy (and that is the biggest understatement of the year)

Before bedtime on Thanksgiving - Ann had found the game "telestrations" upstairs and really wanted to play it.  So my dad and Janelle played it with her.

The day after Thanksgiving we went to a park nicknamed the "butterfly park" (because the canopies are in the shape of butterflies).  My parents had taken Ann and Ian there at least twice earlier in the week while I was at work.  The kids didn't mind coming back.

Sitting on a caterpillar 

Janelle and Ann

There were these big long slides (that started at the top of a little hill) that Ann was really enjoying climbing up to and going down.  Ian liked the idea of climbing up to the top but refused to go down the slide.  This was him saying a pouty face "no" when asked if he wanted to go down the slide.

He would go down these smaller slides though :)