Some Christmas Festivities

Here is some of our Christmas celebrating while we were still in Oregon...

Ross's little joy school did a Nativity play.  Here is Ross the shepherd giraffe all ready to go.  I had to bribe him to wear the costume with cookies...in the video he was determined to get a cookie.  Watch him make a break for it...

The play...

He wouldn't keep his hood on the stinker.

Joseph and Mary with Baby Jesus.

Cheese!

Here is the song he KNOWS but wouldn't sing during the Nativity.

We manage to catch the annual Light Parade down Forest Grove Main Street.  So fun!

The boys watching

Ross loved the trucks!

The girls keeping warm and having fun!

I love that Forest Grove has so many trees you can even use them on their floats!

Ross couldn't tear his eyes away for a second.

Santa himself!  We saw him after the parade a couple streets down in his slay.  Ross called out, "Merry Christmas!" to him and Santa wished him one right back.  Ross was ecstatic!

We got to watch the Christmas devotional too.  I love that Ross is photo bombing in the background.

Tried to get a family selfie...Ruby's trying to pick her nose and Ross wouldn't hold still for a second.

Snuggle time :)

The MoTab knows how to set Christmas off just right.

Ross really wanted to go dig in the wood chips...he was confused why his shovel had a giant ice cube attached...

Ruby getting ready to take out our Christmas cards and goodies to our friends and neighbors instead of lame-o packing. :)

We got Christmas Jammies from Grammy Joanne

 

We went to the Esplin Family Christmas Party.  They sang some Hawaiian songs to get ready for the reunion this summer - Ruby crawled on in and plopped herself down right in the middle and watched them all sing and do the actions.  Adorable.

Daddy and Ross did the lummi sticks

Grandma Claudia did some sweet teachings

Ross and one of his cousins had fun pushing this board back and forth for about 10 minutes.  Hilarious.

We watched the family history of Grandma and Grandpa Esplin and the pictures and videos of the last Hawaii reunions.

Ruby got to meet Young and he is now one of her best friends. :)

We went to see the lights at Temple Square - a must.  Ross hung out with Uncle Thom.

A cute boy in the lights...oh the "cheese" face.

An updated family Temple Square picture :) 2013

2011

2007

Our first Christmas after we were married, Steve gave this to me.  It was painted by a great member in our ward at the time - inspired by that picture above Steve gave him of us.

The crew that came.

Hanging with gramps

Ruby thought the fountain was too cool to look at the camera.

Cousins and Grandpa

Visiting Santa - Ross was completely star struck - too excited to even tell him he had been a good boy and was wishing for a "blue airplane" for Christmas (influenced by a Santa Claus book he's been reading.  I think he thought he could only choose a toy from the pictures and a blue airplane was the coolest).  He just smiled and sat there.  Ruby was NOT happy I put her on a stranger's lap - she just cried until I picked her back up.

Grandpa Stan met us at the mall and gave Ross a ride in one of the cars - Ross was in heaven!

We hung out playing for a little bit as well.

 We went to see The Hobbit for our Christmas Eve movie with some of Steve's and my family before we went to the Christmas Eve party at Steve's house they do every year.

Steve's Uncle Jack read a beautiful story about a man named Sam and learning the gift of giving.

 We ate, we played our traditional Christmas song pictionary with play dough, had our devotional and wrote our gift to Christ this year to put in our annual stockings, and visited before it got super late and we drug ourselves the hour commute home where I stayed up ridiculously late trying to catch up putting together presents, wrapping and being ready for Christmas morning.  Oh Christmas - you came too fast this year!  We've managed to hang on to you though - by a thread!