A Very Waited For Christmas

Christmas finally came, as it seems to do.  I'm so glad that it does that.  It is my favorite!!  We have a tradition to go bowling on Christmas Eve.  Dustin barely came out on top, but it was a close game.  It was looking like I was maybe going to beat him with my score of 87, so that tells you what kind of a game we had.  He bowled a strike right at the end, to pull ahead of Maren, who had been in the lead.

 Later that night we had our traditional Bethlehem Dinner.  We started out with acting out the Nativity.  Gramma Lana joined us.

 After dinner we all opened Christmas jammies, played games, tracked Santa on the computer and left out treats for him and his reindeer.  And then off to bed for the kiddos.

 While we slept, Santa came!

 One of our favorite traditions is that the kids draw names and then they each make a gift for that person.  I love to see what they come up with, and they are always so excited to receive their well thought out, made with love gift from their sibling.  This year, Ryan made Maren earrings, Maren made Avery a blanket, Avery made Grant a Woolly Willy plate, and Grant made Ryan a board to hang his medals on.

 The girls gave me these sweet elf slippers.  Ryan is modeling them well.

 Tennis racquets for all the kids who didn't already have one.

 A greasy pizza pillow for Dustin.

 And the final gift that we let the kids open was...the announcement that after probably 10 years of asking, begging, pleading and praying, we could start looking for a dog!!!

 The loot.  (Somehow, Ryan didn't get a picture taken, but rest assured, he also had a big pile of gifts)

 Avery got the game, Pie Face.  We have had a lot of fun with this.

 And, Jacque and Tyler sent us the game, Mouth Guard.  The kids wore these mouth guards around for days.

 Grant and his Woolly Willy food creation.

 We woke up Christmas morning to about 14 inches of new, wet snow.  After opening presents, we hurried to the church to help shovel the walks because our ward starts at 9 a.m.  Within about 30 minutes, we got the word that they had cancelled church, due to the snow and road conditions.  That doesn't happen very often in Utah, but it was definitely a lot of snow!  Since then, we've added another foot of snow to our pile!

The next day we planned to start looking, and take a few days or weeks to find the perfect shelter dog for our family.  She would be 2-3 years old and already house trained.  A few hours later we came home with this:   

Meet Pepper.  Our 6 week old (maybe more like 4), not even paper trained, could barely eat solid food, woke up every hour and a half of the first night, adorable little Shorkie puppy.  We should never have looked at puppies!

Oh, but she's cute.  And so tiny.  The kids are in heaven.  And Dustin and I?  We are adjusting to having a baby around again, who has lots of accidents and needs lots of supervision.  However, I would be lying if I said that we were not also enjoying this sweet puppy.  

2016 ended with games as a family, and then as the kids went off to different friend's houses, we played games with our neighbors, the Peery's.  We have been so blessed in 2016!