Bob's Birthday

Bob gets told every year that with having his birthday New Year's Eve, he is never without a party. While that is true, I feel bad for him because sometimes I think his birthday tends to get overshadowed by all the other festivities of the season. This is the only picture we have. :-( He did get his Lemon Raspberry Cheesecake that he wanted though. He is always happy with that.

The pets enjoy Christmas too.

These photos seem to becoming a tradition as well...

Muggsie got her usual toy. She had been with out this toy for a couple of months. She latched on to this new one right away. She uses it almost like a pacifier. It is really strange, but she loves it! She is on her 5th one...I think.

This is Pixie's favorite place to be at Christmas time. I put up this set of 3 little Christmas trees on a table and put this white fluffy stuff at the base of them. She likes to curl up and sleep under the trees on the fluffy stuff.

What can I say...I love my pets.

The celebrating continues...

We can't leave Cali, Jeremiah, & Miracle out. We missed them on Christmas day this year because they were down in St. David visiting with Jeremiah's family. So we got to celebrate with them a few days later.

Christmas Evening

Ok, so we all like to prolong the festivities all day long. The whole family gets together again in the evening. We usually have a bunch of finger foods for dinner to make things easy. Then we have a gift exchange. The adult siblings draw names too. I think everyone has more fun just being together.

It's a little crowded and maybe a little chaotic, but we all have lots of fun!

Since everyone is on a tight budget this year, there were a lot of homemade gifts. i like the homemade ones because there just seems to be a lot more personal thought put into it. Autumn & Dave had us. Autumn made us blocks with vinyl lettering that say "BELIEVE" on them plus she did some more vinyl sayings that we can put up on our walls. I thought it was great!This was definitly the year for porcelain dolls. All the grandaughters got them from my parents. So fun! They were all historical dolls. Summer got Princess Grace.McKenzi got Betsy Ross.My parents gave all the siblings a great gift this year. They put together a geneology book that is personally done for each one of us. It has our personal geneological lines plus it is loaded with stories about many of our ancestor...many which are personal journal entries. We also recieved a book with all the decendants of Charles Sreeve Peterson, my Great Great Grandpa. I will cherish these books for the stories and also because I know the many, many hours of work that went into these books!

Then we all dig into our stockings. This has been a tradition for as long as I can remember. We wait until the evening to open up our stockings. It drives all the kids crazy with anticipation, but they love it.

Christmas Morning

I think this was the first Christmas morning that we actually slept in 'til 8 am. I guess that's an advantage to having teenagers. We always have to take the traditional picture of the kids coming down the stairs. It was only Summer and McKenzi this year. It was a treat to have Carter & Dian with Evelynne and Lucas over to open presents and have breakfast with us.I love this picture! I had made some name plaques for the kids this year for the kids to hang on their walls. Summer had written her name out in musical symbols almost a year ago. Bob had kept the paper that she drew it on. I was able to find a font on line that would work. Autumn has access to a vinyl machine, so she was able to cut everything out for me. I had to laugh...it took my mom a while to figure out that it said "Summer".
Bob got me this Marie Osmond doll. She is absolutely adorable. I never had a porcelain doll as a kid, but I am slowly begining to collect them. Bob has good taste :-)Tanner joined us a little later for the festivities right before the whole family came over for the everning.

Family Christmas Party

The Monday before Christmas we always have a big family Christmas party where the cousins all act out the Nativity while my dad narates out of the Bible. It's a fun tradition for all the kids. They take turns being different characters each year.

Another fun tradition is the cousins draw names and they do an ornament exchange. So by the time they are ready to leave home, they will each have a box of their own Christmas ornaments. They all love to see all the different ornaments that they get each year.

After all these things we always end the night with a visit from our favorite Santa...Don Hathaway. He has been coming to our family parties for years. He was in our ward when we lived on 7th street. McKenzi thought it was the greatest thing because Santa was in her ward. She & Don have had a special bond over the years that I think will last a lifetime. I love how he always makes sure to talk a bit about the real meaning of Christmas...the birth of our Savior.Of course, neither Tanner or Summer are too old to sit on Santa's lap.Each of the kids get a turn and Santa gives a gift to each child.

1st Baby Grandson

On Dec. 3 at 12:41 am Carter & Dian had their 2nd child: Lucas Bently Schneider weighed 6 lb. 2 oz. He is so cute! He reminds me a lot of what Carter looked like when he was born only a little smaller. He seems to have such a calm temperament. Watching my grandchildren being born is such a blessing and brings home just how precious the miracle of life is.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is always a fun time with family. We were so happy to have my sister Heidi with her whole family here from California.

The day before Thanksgiving I got a weird itch to do something creative just for fun. I think it was a little ambitious for me to do this the night before because it took a bit longer than i had anticipated. I made 40 of these little turkeys out of Oreo's, Reece's miniatures, mini chocolate chips, and candy corns. Candy corns are extreemly difficult to find after Halloween! I had to go to about 5 different stores to find them. I think they turned out pretty cute. The kids all seemed to like them.

Cali decided to get a bit ambitious too. She has been wanting to attempt making a TURDUCKIN for the past couple of years. This year she did it. What is a turduckin?...It's a chicken with stuffing, stuffed into a duck..with a little more stuffing, which is then stuffed into a turkey...with a little more stuffing. Take in mind that each one of the birds is each completely deboned. They are then all sewn together. I was amazed that the birds could be deboned yet still remain intact. All I did was help with the stuffing and provide the oven to cook it in. It was quite yummy...very flavorful! However, it wasn't real pretty to look at.

Then, of course, we always have to ad the traditional picture of our pie spread. We had 13 homemade pies this year.

We have dinner every other year at my parents with the thought of hitting the in-laws on the "off" years. Then the thought is that pies would be done on the alternate years. It seems that our family is a bit unusual with so many HOMEMADE pies, so everyone seems to stick around for pie no matter what year it is. My parents rent one of those big bouncy thinks for the kids. It takes up a big chunk of their back yard. The kids all love it. That is where the kids end up...but this is where the adults end up...crashed! The football games are on, but I am not sure how much of them actually get watched.

Family Togetherness...Ha!

Ok, it's catch up time. Life seems to be flying by so quickly!

Back in November we had a little scare with Bob's mom being airevaced down here to the valley thinking she was having a heart attack and the doctors couldn't keep her blood pressure down. Everything turned out just fine...no heart attack...just an adjustment in the meds. All the siblings came into town with everything going on, so they decided to use this opportunity to get some photos done for the first time in YEARS. This was quite a feat. This first picture was how most of them went...not a whole lot of seriousness with this bunch.

We finally got one good enough to give his parents for Christmas.