Christmas and New Years 2014

We spent the holidays in Cedar. Though I tried to not get too busy with projects and obligations in December, I failed. I was very busy. We still managed to do some fun things with the kids.

We went up the mountain to my family's ranch and cut our own Christmas tree. It's been a few years since we've been able to have a live tree and our house smelled wonderful.

We also have an elf on the shelf named Benji who comes to visit every Christmas season. The boys loved waking up in the morning and running around the house to find Benji to see what he was up to in the night.

After one Family Home Evening we made a rice crispy train and decorated it. It was a lot better than the gingerbread train we did last year. Malachi liked to stick his finger in the icing and lick it. Levi took quite a bit of time decorating his engine. 

By the end Levi was squirting icing on his belly and sticking little candy balls to it.

We opened presents at our house Christmas morning. We got each boy 2 gifts and some stocking stuffers. We've realized they don't need much at all. In fact, after Levi opened his first gift, he said he wanted to wait until the next day to open any more gifts. Adrian and I would not go for that, so we coaxed him into opening all his gifts. Adrian and I did not get any gifts for each other or from Santa. 

Here's the tree Christmas morning.

Levi got a take-apart jeep with a power drill! He's pretty smart and can take it apart and put it together all by himself.

Malachi loves animals and he got some toy animals and a barn.

Levi got a new bike with pedals. He's not able to ride it yet. He needs a bit more confidence in himself to do it.

Malachi got a tool bench from grandma and grandpa. Both boys enjoy playing with this.

We woke up Christmas morning to snow, and it snowed all day long. It made for the perfect white Christmas.

We spent Christmas afternoon at my parent's house with my whole family. We had a short Christmas program and had a Christmas dinner. We did a white elephant gift exchange where Adrian and I both got gifts. My parents also got us each a gift, a manual wheat grinder and some 72 hour food blocks. It was just what we wanted, some additions to our emergency preparations.

We walked Main Street one December evening to look at Christmas Lights. We started at Lin's and got some chocolate chip cookies to eat while we walked. It was an enjoyable time. 

Here's one of my projects I did. I made some new ornaments for our tree. I cut off a limb from a fallen aspen tree up the mountain. My dad sliced it and drilled holes in them and I burned some Christmas images on them. I really liked how they turned out. I made about 40 ornaments total.

For New Year's we had a party at my sister Jana's house with most of my family. We had homemade pretzels and played New Years themed minute-to-win-it games. We all laughed a lot and really enjoyed our time together.