Christmas and Alli Came to Visit!

We had such a fun Christmas! 

Aunt Alli came to visit us and we had the best time with her here

Chandra sent me a food chopper and a candle!

I love them both

Grandma sent Kinley a yellow bug

Went to Gilbert Run Park

Made sugar cookies with the kids since they said they missed making and decorating them at school

One of Tanner's STEM projects

Making snow angels

Reindeer decoration

Aunt Alli came!

The first day she was here, the kids still had school, so we just hung out around the house

And did a little chalk drawing

That night we had planned to go to the temple to see the lights around it but this is as far as we got. 

The line was super long and they would probably have turned the lights off before we got to see them (happened to our friends). So we just snapped this picture and turned around and went to Chick-Fil-A.

Working on our Christmas puzzle

Went to Gilbert Run Park with Alli.

We threw a bunch of rocks in the lake.

And played at the playground.

We were the only ones there!

We also fed the ducks and geese

Tanner got one to come super close

Finished the puzzle in ONE day

Made gingerbread (graham cracker) houses together

They turned out so good

Kinley said Aunt Alli is really one of the kids, just bigger

Alli and I made Thai Peanut Noodles and cream cheese wontons together for Christmas Eve dinner

It was fun to cook together

And turned out amazing

We had our Christmas Devotional.

We read the Christmas story and acted it out with the Fisher Price nativity set.

Then we did our Secret Santa gift exchange and said what we loved about the person we were giving a gift to

I burnt the cookies for Santa! 

I have never burnt cookies in my life but I completely forgot about them this time. Everyone said he would still eat them, and he did.

The kids carrying on my family's tradition of all sleeping in the same room on Christmas Eve

Santa came!

Everyone must have been very good this year.

Rushing for their toys

Tanner got an Alakazam!

Maddie already made cheesecake bars with Aunt Alli out of this cookbook

I got the Victorinox chef knife!

It is amazing

Trevor got a fancy new camera

Kinley got an Elsa nightgown/princess dress

Maddie got a book that teaches how to draw unicorns, mermaids, etc.

Aunt Alli tried it out with her

I had planned on making a nice pepperoncini roast with potatoes for Christmas dinner, but the day of, I realized I didn't have any pepperoncinis. So we decided to have a BBQ instead. It ended up snowing the whole afternoon/evening, but we still had our BBQ.

Alli went with me to Body Pump Saturday morning and then afterwards we got breakfast at Panera.

We went to the gym 4 times while she was here!

Saturday was the coldest day over the break so we had a warm cozy fire and smores

Warming their backs

For Secret Santa I got Trevor an overnight date! 

Alli watched the kids for us and we spent the night in a hotel on Solomons Island.

They had a great time and so did we.

We went for a walk around St Mary's River State Park as part of our date

And we checked out a pastry shop

Our last night with Alli we went out to eat at Texas Roadhouse.

We loved having Alli here to visit us, it made our Christmas so fun!

I took the kids to Skyzone with the two passes Tanner won

They loved it!

Maddie's piano recital over zoom

Part 2

Playing in the snow on our deck on Christmas