Santa's little helpers

So last week I decided to take some Christmas photos of the boys (or as Nate believes, torture my children). Although Nate thinks our kids are over photographed, I can usually convince him to help me get some good smiles out of the kids. As usual it was quite the work out to get my kiddos to cooperate, but with some bribery and A LOT of very goofy stunts from mom and dad (mostly dad) we managed to get some pictures that I love.

Some funny out takes

My favorites

Oh Christmas Tree

We got the best Christmas tree we have ever had this year. It is full, has a great shape, and is about 9.5 feet tall. It is awesome! I love it! Nate was not thrilled when I decided the biggest and most awkward tree to haul was the one for us this year, but even he has come around and admitted that it is the best tree we have ever had. The kids of course loved decorating the tree. Carson kept putting ornaments side by side so they could "be friends." Gradually, I have split up some of these friendships so our tree looks more normal. Lincoln found an old teddy bear ornament that Nate made as a child and adopted it as his own. While decorating the tree Lincoln would pretned the teddy bear was eating the other ornaments (as you can imagine this was a bit destructive). We decided to place the bear ornament high up on the tree to keep it from constantly being pulled off the tree, eating all the other ornaments, and causing havoc and destruction on our Christmas tree. Lincoln still loves that bear ornament and will frequently tell me that his "bear is tall." We had a terrific time decorating our tree this year, because our kids were so into it. We love our Christmas tree!

Dear Santa

Carson wrote (or rather dictated to me) his first letter to Santa. It was really cute so I thought I would share it. I did give Carson some hints as to how to write a polite letter. He wanted to just start asking Santa for things but I told him it is polite when writing a letter to Santa to ask how he is doing and to wish him a Merry Christmas. This is what Carson came up with:

Dear Santa,

I hope your reindeer are good and your feelings are doing well. Santa I want: a ship with a hammerhead shark and pretend water, a light saber, a race track with sharks and dinosaurs, a new tractor tipping race track, a Wall-e game for my Leapster and I will share it with Lincoln, clone war toys, a hard plane without paper, a pirate hat, a new back-pack -batman, a video fighting game with swords like at the tag store (what he is describing here is a Nintendo Wii from Best Buy), a lightning McQueen that's blue with guns, and Bolt. Merry Christmas!

Love,
Carson

St George

In November Nate and I left the kids with Nate's parents while we took a much needed break down in St. George. While in St George we went hiking in Zions National Park, did a session at the St. George temple, went to a concert at the Tuachan amphitheatre, ate out every meal and basically enjoyed being without the responsibilities of work and parenthood for a few days. It was awesome! Love the kids but sometimes you just need a break.