Boys and their toys - girls and their.......kids?

For about 10 years now Dan and his bestest friends from High School (Spencer & Ethan) have been dreaming up a super sweet nighttime paintball game. Finally they were able to make those dreams a reality. They planned an overnight campout with friends and brothers and paintball. They were all so excited, they were like getty school girls.  Dan even said "It is not macho how excited I am right now!" 

Thankfully, all of us wives enjoy each other and so we decided to hang out together while our boys were out playing war. The only bummer... there was 15 kids!  Fifteen kids is a LOT of dang kids. At times it was very loud but in all it was a lot of fun. I would do it again in a second.

My girlfriends Celinda and Jen and my sister-in-law Aubrey and I made breakfast for dinner for all the kids and then painted our nails and talked about our husbands (all good of course!)

Celinda and her 2 1/2 year old Abbey.

Jen cutting onions, apparently every home cook needs onion goggles!

Aubrey cooking up some hashbrown - yummmm

Olivia LOVES Brookie (Bookie is what she calls her, which is an improvement on boogie - which is what she used to call her)

Jet is Spencer & Celinda's baby, I think he is about 5 months now. I love babies!

Ryleigh, Jayda, Tayler & Ashley just snuggled down on Ethan & Jen's bed and watched tween movies all night!

Brookie, again. She is such a dang cutie

The boys and Kylie were having a blast playing the Wii in Tayler's room. The rest of these pictures are actually pretty funny because the room was pitch black and I  told them to strike a pose and this is what they looked like when the flash went off!

Kylie Bear

Spencer Roonie! I love how Spencer has no problem keeping his eyes open when a bright flash bursts in his eyes when he is standing in absolute darkness but heaven forbid he keep his eyes open for a picture in the daylight!

Garrett & Ethan being goofballs!

A Wonderful Day

I guess I better start with Christmas Eve. Traditionally we open up one present on Christmas Eve and it is always pajamas. The kids love this and it was a tradition in my family as well as Daniel's growing up so it has been a fun no-brainer tradition to pass on. Every year we try our hardest to get a decent picture of the kids in their Christmas jammies in front of the Christmas tree. But for every one of these:

I, without fail, get 15 of these:

Nevertheless, I do get one that is not toooooo bad.

Then we go to sleep....... or at least we try.

This year the boys woke up at 2:30 AM! Actually let me re-phrase that. Spencer got up at 2:30am to use the bathroom and "suddenly remembered that Santa probably came to our house" so he went out to take a sneak peek and could not contain his joy! He saw bikes for everyone so he needed to alert the whole household - and that he did.

Of course Dan and I are not the type of parents to allow this behavior (even if it is Christmas) so Dan sternly sent them off to bed once again. About an hour later I heard them out in the living room sizing up the stockings and everyones bikes again. This time I told them to get back into bed, except I am pretty sure that that was just in my dream.

Finally at about 7:30 Olivia woke up, which meant it was time for the lazy ol' parents to get out of bed. Ironically this is the latest we have ever slept in on a Christmas morning and the Earliest our children have ever woken up on a Christmas morning. huh, funny how that works.

I had wanted to get a cute photo of each of the kids by their stacks from Santa but by this time the kids had at least 4 hours on me and the Santa stacks were no longer cute nor organized so I have nothing. Just a few snap shots here and there. Sorry to say.

Each one of the kids made out like bandits. Every year I am blown away by the amount of gifts they get. This was going to be a "lean" year but it turned out to be quite blessed.

Grandpa & Grandma Gibbons did something unusual this year... they went in on a group gift for the kids, instead of the usually smaller individual gifts.

I would say it was a hit (That is Ryleigh's leg on the side doing a little dance).

Since Olivia had a birthday just a couple of days earlier she was a pro at unwrapping presents, but of course her Big Wheel from Santa was not wrapped and she loved it just the same!

Oh, and she also had triplets today! Plus she inherited a white tiger cub! Yeah!

Happy Birthday Olivia

Wow! I can't believe that Olivia is 2 today. I seems like only yesterday.....

Temple Lights

One of the many things I love about living in Arizona are the beautiful Temple Christmas lights at the Mesa Arizona Temple. I was so excited to take the kids to see how amazing it is and maybe start a tradition with them. Dan was unable to attend because he is busy studying for finals but I think he wanted to be with us so bad he probably couldn't concentrate on studying! Olivia this year has really fallen in LOVE with Christmas lights - whenever she sees a home that is brightly decorated she says "ooooooh! Pretty...."

Thankfully my parents and little brother Chad came with me and the kids - thankfully!

Not only are the lights themselves fantastic but the scenes placed around the Temple grounds are just so amazing too! Each one tells a story and is so beautiful to look at. I just wish I could look for longer - but there are so many dang people that you can only catch a glimpse and then be moving along.

So - FYI - Just in case you were wondering, Monday night is probably not the best night to visit the Temple for Temple Lights! :)

New Family Pictures

My wonderfully talented cousin Nikaela took our family pictures this year and I think they turned out really neat! What do you think?