Holiday Fun and New Traditions!!

We've been trying to do a lot of fun things with the kids this year for the holidays. We've seen Santa. It's really cute, Paige calls him "Ho Ho". She'll say, "Ho ho is gonna bring me baby doll?". She knows he's santa, but she likes saying Ho Ho. And with the Christmas music on the radio, every time we're in the van, they'll start singing jingle bells or Rudolf or a mixture of a few songs. Derek's even learned a few songs at school that he's teaching us! And the best part about this Christmas is we have a Secret Santa this year! The kids are all very excited each night when we get a knock on the door and the goodies have been pretty good! Tad is excited as the kids are - he's never had a secret santa before!


We got lucky with Santa this year. We found out he was outside a store on Saturday and we were the first ones in line to see him (there wasn't even really a line). They got a free picture with Santa, a frame and some cookies, all for free! It was great! All the kids told Santa what they wanted - Derek wants a remote control car and a dinosaur, Kevin wants a car, and Paige wants a baby doll. We'll have to see if Santa thinks they have been naughty or nice!

Luckily no one was scared of Santa this year.


We decided to make our own stockings this year using foam Christmas stickers and glitter.

Derek made sure all of his reindeers had a red nose!

Kevin wanted his entire stocking covered with stickers!

Paige really liked the present stickers the best!






We love going to the boat parade at Tempe Town Lake each year!

It was pretty cold and windy that night!


Everyone loved watching Frosty the Snowman!!


We started a new tradition of making our own ornaments each year. I love all the cheap stuff you can find at Michael's and JoAnn's!!

These are the finished ornaments that we made... we still need to put in the photos. I made the wreath, Tad the reindeer, Kevin the polar bear, Paige the angel and Derek the santa. You will notice that Paige's is almost all pink.... I opened the markers and she immediately grabbed every shade of pink she could find!


I had to include a few pictures of Kevin all dressed up. He looked so handsome and grown up in Derek's old suit!