Christmas 2013

For the first time in the 5 Christmases Louis and I have been married we had our Christmas on actual Christmas morning!  I guess that is a good thing about your parents being on a mission.  Only one family to visit on Christmas!
On Christmas Eve Louis read the girls the Christmas story and watched a short video.  After dinner the girls took a quick baths so they could open their Christmas Eve jammies!  It is a tradition I really love!

We also opened a new Christmas movie!  This year we got Arthur Christmas.  We watched that and ate popcorn.  Then it was off to bed!

On Christmas morning Louis and I got breakfast ready then woke up the kids.  Yes we had to wake them up, they are sleepy heads.  Before we ate we opened presents!  Mary was not happy about that at first.  She just wanted to eat!  She did enjoy her presents though.  It was so fun having a three year old this Christmas!  Avery was so excited the entire morning.  She loved all of her presents that Santa left her in her stocking.  She also enjoyed handing out all of the presents this year.  

Mary's first present.  You can see her unhappiness.  She just wanted food!

Avery was excited to get her new scripture case and her very own Book of Mormon

Giving her new Lion nosies 

Then, to Mary's delight, we ate breakfast!  We had fun with breakfast this year. 

We played with our new toys then headed down to Ogden to spend the rest of the day with the Brandleys.  It was a great day filled with happiness, fun, friends, and laughter.  Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Miss Mary

I haven't done an update on Mary since she turned 1, so I want to do one.  She is a very sweet girl.  Well, until you try to take her food.  She is still our bottomless pit!  Today in church she had a little cup of food and Avery tried to take a piece and Mary screamed at her!
Mary talks so much!  If I ask her to say any word she will do her best to copy it!  She seriously learns a few new words everyday.  I have many favorites.  Pease (please), dant do (thank you), eat (of course), hep (help), and bye bye.  She talks so much more than Avery did.  She even said her first prayer this last week.  She did well, except for not wanting to sit there for the prayer!
Along with talking so much, she also knows so many animal sounds!  I can't even name them all.  Her newest ones are hippo and giraffe.  And in case you didn't know, this is what a hippo says:

She is now walking and running, she has to keep up with her sister!  She still loves to climb.  Her new hang out spot is the top of the couch.

Here are a few of Mary's favorite things:  

Reading!  She will bring you the same book over and over and over again!  Her favorite books are the baby bright books.  She also loves any book with animals.

Putting pretties on.  Around here pretties are necklaces and bracelets.  This has been her thing lately!  She loves getting their little jewelry box out and putting every single necklace on.  She loves her pretties!

Her daddy!  She is such a daddy's girl!  Which I am grateful for because Avery was a mama's girl.  Mary loves Louis so much!  Her whole face lights up when he walks through the door or when I just say his name.  I love seeing the two of them together.

We love our Mary so very much!  She is sweet and loving.  

P.S.  Her smiles are the best!  

Don We Now Our Worst Apparel

Last weekend we had our semi-annual Brandley sibling supper!  It was Megan and Phillip's turn to host and they decided to do an ugly sweater party.  These are becoming quite popular, but it was the first one we've gone to.  It was a lot of fun, Megan and Phillip did a wonderful job!  That day there was a pretty bad snow storm so people had a fun time getting there!  Once we were all there though we started dinner.  Megan and Phill made two delicious soups and there was also salad, fruit, and desserts.  After dinner we played some fun games!

For the first game we had to hold a candy cane in our mouth and hook other candy canes onto it and transfer that candy cane to a bowl.  Whoever could do the most in one minute won.  Louis and Phillip made it to the finals and Phillip won!

For the second game we had five Christmas cards standing up on the table and we had one minute to blow them to the edge of the table so they were dangling off.  I know that sounds confusing.  Hopefully the pictures can help explain what we had to do.  Jonathan won this game.

After the games we took some pictures together!

Jonathan's sweater won ugliest

May I explain the awesomeness of Kaileb's sweater?  You see the gingerbread man?  Well Kaileb tied strings to it's legs and connected that string up to his hands.  So when he raised his arms the gingerbread man did the splits!!!  Isn't that awesome!  He won most creative.

We had a great time and really love getting together with Louis' siblings!
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-blah!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

We started off the Christmas season the day after Thanksgiving.  We started with dinner then sat around the coffee table to hear a story about the birth of Christ.  After we read our story and talked about it we got bundled up and drove to the nativity outside the Tabernacle.  It was very nice and the perfect way to kick off the Christmas season.  Avery really enjoyed going to see baby Jesus.  She wanted to go and touch him so bad, but we couldn't let her.  We had to teach her that we don't cross ropes.  It was a good time with family!

Thanksgiving

Louis wasn't feeling very well after working for 10 days straight and going to school most of those days as well so we stayed home this Thanksgiving.  I actually loved it.  We don't get a lot of family time with Louis' schedule so it was so wonderful just being together!  On Thanksgiving we were planning on having Spaghetti and rolls for dinner, but at about 1:30 we got a call from Jake inviting us to go have dinner with the Bybee's.  We said sure!  So we headed over there with the rolls and cinnamon butter I made around 3.  It was very nice having dinner with them and we are very grateful for their offer to let us join them for dinner.  They even invited us over for next Thanksgiving too!
Around 9:30 that night I went out to do some shopping.  I went with Alisha and Celestial and we had a fun time.  We went to Old Navy and Down East.  I got a dress coat for Avery as well as a dress, a new pair of pants, and a shirt.  I got two shirts and a pair of gloves for myself.  We had fun and stayed out too late!

This is the only picture I took on Thanksgiving