New Year's Eve Fun

On New Year's Eve, a few of us ladies decided to make up our eyes with a little bit of color...or lots of color.

I have very big eyelids...and now they are blue eyelids.

Group shot of all the lovely ladies!  I don't think blue is exactly my color...but we did have a lot of fun!

Here's our sexy shot.  Wow, those are beautiful ladies...even if we don't exactly look as sexy as felt...hee, hee.

My niece even had here eyes done!

And the making up of our eyes was just one fun thing we did on New Years Eve.  We also had some great food and games and puzzles and tag and time together as a family.  What a way to welcome in the year of 2012!

Crocheting headbands

One of my sister-in-laws' taught us all how to crochet headbands with a crocheted flower on the top.  We also enjoyed hours of talking with each other.

Here's our fearless teacher.  She was so patient as she helped each of us with all of our questions and mistakes.  And she was a great teacher!  We all finished at least one headband that day.

And here's the finished piece and our beautiful model.

Angry Birds

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law got an Angry Birds game for Christmas.  In this game you build different shapes with pigs in them for the birds to fly over and smash.  It was a lot of fun.  Take a look at some of our photos.

You'll notice that I got a few photos of the birds actually in the air...lots of fun!

My mother-in-law doesn't wear yellow birds in her hair.  This is actually the bird in motion.

Cookie Day

One of my Mother-in-laws' family traditions is to have a cookie day where the grandkids roll out cookie dough and using cookie cutters, making a plate of cookies for themselves.  We cook them up and then the grandkids decorate them with icing and sprinkles.

The adults think they are needed to help the little ones with their cookies.  Really, we need to think we are needed.  It's lots of fun for the little kids and the big kids.

And when I talk about cookies being made there are also cookies being eaten.  I caught you cutie!

I love this family tradition and hope that when I have my little kiddos they will also participate in such a fun cousin activity.

Christmas Eve Family Dinner

One of the family traditions that we have is a family meal together on Christmas Eve.  This is the "little kids" table.  Because our meal is done by candlelight and knowing that candles should not be on the table with the smallest members of our family, they were given a small lantern.  And oh how they loved it and how they love just being together.

 

This photo is partly staged.  When my nephew realized I was taking a picture of him and his cousin, he decided to pull a face.  I love his personality...even if he's a bit dramatic.  As a side note, the garland in the middle is white lights with lots of colored ribbons.  It was another thing to have on the table instead of lighted candles.

Lots of yummy food at the Christmas eve dinner.  In fact, we love getting together because we love the company and enjoy the food. 

Here's one of my gorgeous nieces.  Doesn't she have a beautiful smile?!

And here's another beautiful niece!

Baby Blessing Day

My sister was able to have her baby boy blessed on the day before Christmas.  Here are the family members that were able to participate in the blessing of this little boy.  It's great to belong to such an awesome family.

Here's my wonderful parents with my sister and her new little family.

Yep, here's a photo where I am actually in the photo and not behind the camera.  I like the photo!  Because we have lived out of state from our parents and siblings, we haven't always been around for special moments like these.  So it's nice that there are times when we can be part of it all.

Here's my brother's family!

And another brother's family.  (We were sad that we didn't have my third brother's family there but they were unable to travel for the holidays).

Cute cousins catching up on family gossip or just having a good time together.

Gingerbread Houses

We traveled down to Southern Utah to visit with SM's younger sister and her family.  She made gingerbread so that we and another two friends could make a gingerbread house.  SM and I have only made one other gingerbread house in our married life and so we were a bit slow with our ideas.  We watched the other two groups for some ideas.

Part of the fun of putting together a gingerbread house is eating some of the goodies while putting them on the gingerbread house.  Just ask my nieces!

SM was the architect of the gingerbread houses.

Look at those cool logs on the log cabin.

Here are the final three houses.  Unfortunately you can't see all the detail to all these houses.  I will show each house in individual photos and mention my favorite parts about each house.

This house was done my by sister-in-law's friends.  The front "lawn" is covered in rabbits.  I love that the sidewalk is made of Nerds and the roof is made from Bottle Caps.

Here is my sister-in-law's family's gingerbread house.  I love the roof tiles that alternate between red and green.  I also loved the pond that had a small waterfall on one side.  And aren't those fish cute?  There are marshmellow men on the property.  On one side of the house is a "wood" pile that has a bit of "snow" on the top of the wood.  I love it!

And here is our gingerbread house.  SM did such a great job on the icicyles on the side of the house.  The sidewalk paving stones are actually coconut marshmellows and my favorite is the tree in the front yard.  The tree is made up from a Twix bar that has pretzels for branches.  It was a great piece of art...which SM ate as soon as he waited an appropriate amount of time.

And here's a view from the back of each of those gingerbread houses.