I can't believe it! Madelynn didn't lose her first until she was half way through kindergarten! It's the same tooth that Madelynn lost though, I think.
Madelynn lost one just before Christmas, it's the upper one right next to her big tooth.
We went for a drive this evening to look for wildlife. We were going stir crazy in the house. We saw a lot of deer. I don't have any pictures of the deer. It was too dark for my camera. I have some nice pictures of the sunset though. ETA: These are a little big, so the edges are getting cut off. You might have to click on them to get full size. :)
Christmas was different this year. We stayed home for the first time ever. It feels like we were faking it! We let the girls open their presents about 2 o'clock so Grandma and Grandpa and Chelsea could watch on the webcam. At least we had that. Our friends Kim and Jared came over with their kids at 5 and we had dinner with them. They left to go do their presents and came back around 9 and we had a fun night playing some board games and pool. This morning the kids got up early and were ready to do their stockings! I have a few pictures.
It's been snowing since early evening on Christmas Eve. I just went and measuredand as of 11 pm we have 8"!!
I have to say, I am so excited to take the tree down. It's so dry, I'm going to have a huge needly mess in my living room when I get it out the door!
Ava had a class Christmas party on the last day of school before vacation. Here are some pictures. They sang some songs, put presents in each others stockings, and even had a visit from Santa. Madelynn's class had a Polar Express party, but it was just for the kids, so I didn't go.
Not a lot has been going on around here. Travis has been working nights, so he slept all day today. I didn't have a lot to do, so I scrubbed all the cupboards and walls in the kitchen. lol. Exciting day!
It snowed yesterday. This is the first time all winter we've had any kind of accumulation of it. The kids were very excited and had fun throwing snowballs at Dad while we walked home from school. I was excited for it too, but now I'm ready for it to go away. It takes to long to get anything done outside with it here. lol. Actually, it can snow the whole 2 weeks of Christmas vacation. I wouldn't mind that, because I don't have to go anywhere!
We decided to go buy a tree this year with how busy everyone has been working. Travis got a nice one! I think this is the first tree we've ever had that held all of my ornaments without a problem. There is a random slide show at the bottom with pictures from Ava's class Thanksgiving party and the light parade. I was having problems getting pictures to load and finally got it working.
We went to the light parade in Helper tonight for Christmas. We went last year too. I'm almost positive it was on this same weekend, but last year we were watching in about a foot of snow with huge flakes coming down. This year, nada! Wait, it did snow the day before Thanksgiving for about 3 seconds and melted right away. I wish it would snow. I hate when it's cold and not snowing, I mean, what's the point of the cold if it isn't going to snow! Maybe if it would snow I would feel like it's almost Christmas! When I lived in SD I hated the snow. I was so excited to move to NM to get away from it. After 5 years of living there and not getting any snow I missed it. Moving to Wyoming was exciting, maybe we'd see some snow! We did, but mostly it just blew around. Last year around here was awesome! I don't think I'd ever seen so much snow in my life, and it stuck around for a long time! I mean, come on, if it's winter, we should have a little at least. It's still getting into the 50's during the day. It feels like fall! Santa may be wearing shorts delivering presents in Utah this year! lol!
Not a lot has been going on around here. We had Thanksgiving at our house with the Patterson's and Kim's mom. That was nice. The mine gave us all smoked turkeys and they were so good! I couldn't sleep that night, so I went shopping at 5am on Black Friday. It was crazy at Walmart. The lines were about 3/4 of the way thru the parking lot on both sides when I got there at 4:40. By 5 when they opened the lines were all the way to the back of the parking lot. Once I got inside I went to the toys first for some little pet shop thing Madelynn wanted. I grabbed a couple of those and tried to get over to electronics to look at the Wii games they had for $16, but there was no way I could get over there. I made my way to where they had the $9 movies and found out the Wii games were there, but they were all gone already (only about 10 minutes had passed by then!). I came home and tried to sleep again, and couldn't so I headed over to Kmart. It was much nicer there, you could actually walk around! I got most of the shopping for the kids done, so that was nice. The best part of it was that they didn't even know I'd gone, so they weren't asking what I bought! It still doesn't feel like Christmas. Maybe because we haven't got a tree? I am not sure. It sure is going to be weird this year, not going to South Dakota. This will be my first Christmas I haven't went, ever. I have been home on Christmas before, but usually we went before or after in that situation.
Ava and I went up to Provo with Kim, Jared, and Aden to take their car back the Monday after. We walked around the mall a little bit and ate lunch and came home. It was nice to get out of the house for the day. Ava went back to school Tuesday for a "feast." The kids got to bring their favorite foods. I went to help out and it was quite interesting. There was everything from artichokes (Yes! From a 4 year old!) to spagetti noodles and ice cream. Ava brought jello. I guess that was her favorite for now. I would have thought she would have wanted to bring chocolate donuts. :)
Madelynn is doing good, not a lot going on with her. She is doing good in 1st grade and dance. Ava had her checkup today on her tonsils and tubes and he said she got an A+ and is 95% healed. Yay! Now I am wondering why she keeps waking up crying again the last few nights. I've had a little snuggler in my bed for the last 3 nights at about 1 am.
