Christmas Traditions

Christmas Eve

We had our annual Cook Family Christmas Party on Christmas Eve.  My cousin Kathy and her family were here from Brazil so it was a full house!  So fun to see everyone and celebrate Christmas together!

8 Great Grandkids-and HALF of them are mine!!

Yea for Cousins!!

Christmas Day

I was the worst photographer on Christmas and hardly got any pictures :(.  I'll do better next year-I was running on very little sleep all week and not falling over with exhaustion was about all I could handle!   But here we are watching a video about the first Christmas before heading downstairs to see if Santa came...

Charity got this huge dollhouse from Grandma!

Felicity liked the bows and boxes better than the actual presents..

Our big present this year was a trampoline.  We are praying it doesn't blow away with the wind we get here, notice chains and cinderblocks to weight it down!

Miss Felicity's head is a little too big for this Santa hat, but that doesn't bother her!

We had a nice Christmas program at church after we opened our Santa presents, then relaxed at home for a bit before heading to Heidi's.  We did our annual Christmas Recital with all the cousins and ate the Hoyal traditional Sunday tacos for Christmas dinner.  Delicious!  No pictures to show for any of it though! :(

We celebrated with my mom and sister on Monday.  Yummy soup and spoiled kids with lots of presents!  Another fun celebration and the only picture to show for it is...

Felicity taking a bath at Grandmas!

But here is a cute picture I took a few days later of cute coordinating leopards wearing what Aunt Monica gave them...

Another Christmas down in the books!  Hope everyone's was very Merry!

Christmas Escapades

We have been ringing in the Christmas season!

We visited Santa and checked out holiday decor at Victoria Gardens....

Decorated the house...

Ate dessert waffles, sang, and visited Santa again at the Ward Christmas party...

Hunter telling Santa he wants a"hot girlfriend" for Christmas.  You can see the look of laughter on Hunter's face! He asked the other Santa for a million dollars.  We'll see whats waiting under the tree for Hunter this year!

Wore Santa hats and looked adorable...

Visited Great Grandma...

Made Gingerbread Houses with Grandma...

Going to an "All Girls" Christmas Party...

Snuggling together to watch Christmas Movies...

A few nights before Christmas, we got a knock on the door and a sweet girl, Sage, in our ward was there with this GIANT card for Tanner.  Inside, it was filled with notes for him filled with love and encouragement from people in our ward.  Tan has had a really hard this year dealing with his disease, and has had to miss out on a lot throughout the year, and this really lifted his spirits.  I was bawling the whole time we were reading them and I could tell Tan was floating with happiness.  It is so nice to feel loved!  I am so grateful to Sage acting on her prompting to brighten someone's day!  

It's been a busy December, as usual!!

Girls Night Out

My mom and I have been wanting to take Charity on the princess carriage ride for a long time!  We finally did it! Dressed as Belle, she waved to everyone as she floated passed them on her magical ride!

She wanted to eat "French Food" so we went to a Crepe Restaurant in Victoria Gardens!  We had a great Girls Night Out!

Dessert crepes to take home!  Yum!

Grand Canyon

We decided to stay in Las Vegas over Thanksgiving and go see the Grand Canyon!  We drove to Vegas on Thanksgiving day, it took 5.5 hours!, ate Thanksgiving Dinner at a Vegas buffet-which was super expensive, but really good and I was so glad I didn't cook any of it! The next day we drove to the Grand Canyon.  

We went to a little western town they had set up near it...

Where the kids pretended they were dead in this coffin...

  Charity and I learned how to lasso a bull...

 And we went on a wagon ride...

Then a bus took us to see the most gorgeous views ever!  It was breathtaking!

Grandma and her girls...

And her girls and boys..

The boys went on "the Skywalk" which takes you out over the canyon on a glass bridge, which they all thought was really cool!  The girls stayed back to explore a little Native American Village...

Over that cliff behind Ladd is a drop of 4,000 ft.  When I saw him taking this picture, I was very grateful for our life insurance!  It was a fun and exhausting day!

The rest of the trip we had fun playing and eating at "Top Golf"

And relaxing at the Vegas House...

We left early Sunday morning, hoping to get home in time for church meetings...

We did not make those meetings.  It took us 8 hours to get home! It was a fun trip, but we probably won't do it over Thanksgiving weekend again!