3 Birthdays, a Baptism, and some Holidays in between Part 3

Dec 17^th was Ethan’s LONG a waited b-day! He had been counting down the days for a month! This poor child has to wait a whole year not only for Christmas, but for his birthday too! He had such a fun day we just couldn’t pack anymore into it if we tried! This boy had 3 parties! His school class had their class party and it was the last day of school for the beginning of Christmas break. He then got to come home, open all his gifts and then he wanted to go to the skate park and break in his new skateboard he had waited so long for. Then that night we had our ward Christmas party and he wanted to go to that too.

Happy 11th Birthday Ethan! All he wanted was a Ryan Sheckler skateboard

He got his favorite All American Chocolate cake!

We went to the skate park so he could fully test out his new board

Christmas has finally come and let me just say I am exhausted! We got to spend some time with Hal's family, make ginger bread houses, and go to Temple Square. Something we haven't done in years and definitely need to do every year. It was so beautiful and the kids really enjoyed it too!

Nanny's birthday party at the McQuarries. Our trip to Temple Square

The first annual ginger bread house making on Christmas Eve

Christmas at home. Santa came, the children were all happy, and mom got a 3 hour nap!

Christmas morning, I forgot to pics of the kids in front of the tree

At least I got a few cute pics of them with their socks. That is there favorite thing to open!

Ok, I know that was an incredibly long post, but it sure taught me a lesson to not wait so long the next time around! There really were a lot of fun Christmas pics, but I just can't make myself upload and re-position one more photo! In all the craziness the last few months I missed getting my Christmas cards and newsletter mailed. Sad, I went to all the trouble of getting them made and into envelopes. To bad that is as far as I got. Maybe next year I can be more on the ball.

Now that Jan is here things are finally beginning to slow down a little. There is always something going on, but I am grateful for my family and for the new year. There is always a re-newed sense of hope at the beginning of each New Year. After having a rough year I am grateful for some of the changes we have had this past year and look forward to even more this year.