New Years Eve

Since my Aunt and Uncle who usually host New Years Eve were out of town we celebrated at our house.  We started out New Years Eve with a morning trip to Build a Bear where the youngest three kids could use the gift card they got from Great Grandma and Grandpa Pearce at Christmas.  The kids had a great time choosing out their stuffed animals and accessorizing them. In the evening we went bowling and then we came back to our house for pizza and Lincoln's birthday celebration.  Then we played a lot of games, watched some movies, and ate a lot of food as we waited to ring in the new year.  At midnight we counted down and then had a bag of balloons fall from the ceiling.  It was pretty sweet!  I love my family I'm glad we could have so much fun together.

Boise state game

Also over Christmas break we went to a Boise State basketball game.  My Aunt and Uncle gave us their tickets, as they weren't going to be able to use them.  We had awesome seats right next to the court!  It was an exciting game, Boise state lost at the buzzer!  It was a very disappointing finish to the game, but we all had a great time.  Even the little kids were pretty much entertained the entire time.

Christmas break

One of the activities we did as a family over Christmas break was go sledding.  The older boys are at an age where they could sled for hours and hours.  We got a couple of new sleds for the occasion.  All of the new sleds were duds except the hot pink one.  I thought the older boys might be put off by the pink slide, but since it was the fastest they were more than happy to overlook the color.Grant went down the hill a few times, but didn't seem overly impressed.  He mostly just wandered around on the top of the hill.  Lily was game to try everything the older boys did, and she loved going down the hill fast.  She even tried a jump like the older boys, but was not as big fan.  It was a really cold day so we didn't last more than a couple of hours, but everyone had a fun time.

Lincoln turns 7!

Our sweet Lincoln turned 7 this year.  He is getting so old!  He had a great birthday!  He loves to be the center of attention.  Of all of my kids I think Lincoln enjoys his birthday the most.  This year Lincoln requested a BYU birthday cake.  I think this cake is going to go down in history as one of the bests, at least by my kids standards.  The cake sunk in the middle so to make it even on top I filled it in with extra frosting.  Oh my, the kids loved it!  There were a lot of little blue mouths.  Lincoln requested the same cake for next year, he may be disappointed next year when the frosting is not as plentiful. It was a very Lego centered birthday, many of his presents were Lego related. Lincoln is such a sweet funny boy.  He has always had a very easy sense of humor and he continues to keep us laughing.  He is creative, and loves to make things out of anything: paper, cereal, blocks, cardboard, trash, you name it he probably has wanted to make something out of it. But creating things with Legos is probably his favorite.   For Christmas he gave Carson a bag of Legos and told him it was a Lego set, then showed him how you could make the Legos into a giraffe. We sure love this kid!  

Christmas 2014

We had a great Christmas!  All of the kids were surprised and appreciative of their gifts.  Carson's main gifts were a microscope and a ipod shuffle.  Lincoln's favorite gifts were: his elf (Junior), his fart gun, and his electronic dog (Zoomer).  Lily's favorite gifts were: her giant unicorn, her barbie castle, and her princess barbies.  Grant loved the rocking horse!  He was very possessive of it, he did not like cousin Claire or Max getting near it.  When they did get to close to his beloved item he would say, "My neigh! My neigh!" We went over to Holly's for the usual Christmas brunch, then headed home for naps and to get ready for the Christmas dinner that I would be hosting.  During our down time we watched some old home movies of my childhood, but I couldn't watch the whole thing because the erratic movement of the camera made me so motion sick that I threw up!  Also Nate had to take Lily to the insta-care before dinner for croup.  The insta-care was packed, and Nate thought they would have to wait for a long time, Shortly after they got there though, Lily started acting strange and she laid down and seemed upset.  Nate asked her what was wrong and she said she couldn't breathe.  Nate immediately told the nurses, and she got to see a Dr very quickly.  She got a quick breathing treatment and some steroids and was sent on her way to enjoy the rest of the day with her family.  We had a delicious Christmas dinner of tacos, made by my Dad. We then spent the rest of the evening visiting and playing games.  It was a pretty perfect day.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was filled with the usual traditions.  This year my parents spent Christmas with us so we had the red and green breakfast.  We went out to eat for breakfast and every participant who wore red and green received some, "green" (aka money). Then we came home and decorated our gingerbread houses.  This year I decided to do gingerbread houses with graham crackers. Nate hot glued together the houses together, which is much easier than trying to get the houses to stick together with frosting, and the kids loved it.  It was the cheaper easier way to do gingerbread houses, we will definitely be doing the graham cracker houses again.  We had extra gingerbread house stuff so we invited Eve to come over and make houses with us.  Also it snowed on Christmas Eve! We had a white Christmas this year.  I love when there is snow at Christmas, it is one of the few times when I'm glad to see the white stuff.  Carson played the part of Joseph in the Nativity and Lincoln and Lily were shepherds.  Of course we finished off the evening with the kids opening some new pj's.