Chevy Chase Ward Christmas Party

Okay, so we just have to brag a little bit. Saturday night we went to our ward's Christmas party and Ethan was quite the little entertainer. During dinner (Ethan ate nothing but rice but at least he loved it!) they had a guy walk around with a microphone interviewing people for entertainment. When he reached us, Taylor used Ethan to deflect the attention from himself and suggested Ethan could sing everyone a Christmas Carol. Much to our surprise Ethan happily took the microphone in his hands and sang the full chorus to "Jingle Bells" (we're not sure he realized he was being heard by everyone). He even clapped for himself when the rest of the room clapped. Another highlight was that he jumped right up on Santa's lap and wasn't afraid at all. Yeah Ethan! And Yeah Taylor for picking out the cute Christmas suit for him to wear!

Christmas Tree Farm with the Gilberts

Christmas Tree Farm with the Gilberts

We just had to say thank you to the Gilberts for inviting us along on their fun trip to the Christmas Tree Farm. Ethan loved being chased around by Sheldon and Kennedy and we had a great time even if we're still sticking with our fake "Charlie-Brown" tree!

Gingerbread Playgroup

Last week the moms in our playgroup had a moment of insanity and thought that making gingerbread houses with the kids might be fun- with 1 and 2 year olds! Crazy! After making a huge mess and getting very sticky, the kids got bored and the mothers got to finish. Oh well, at least there's a few cute pictures!

Christmas Lights with the Business School Group

We enjoyed our trip up to see the lights so much that we decided to go another night and Taylor invited along his group from business school. He was very apprehensive at the beginning of the sememster to be put into a group of 5 strangers and told to do every project, homework assignment, and paper with them. But they turned out to be amazing people and they get along so well. He loves working as well as socializing with them and has had a great semester mostly because of them. From left they are Achin, Trey, Giuliana, Taylor (of course), and Tara.

Temple Lights Trip

Temple Christmas Lights

Every year the Visitor Center next to the temple puts up thousands of Christmas lights. It's always crazy finding a parking spot and keeping your group together with the hundreds of people pouring off of buses but we love it. They have nightly performances and we always like to go to a bell choir one since Ethan is a little more interested in that (he's actually more excited about the stadium style chairs he can climb on and off of and bounce up and down on). After that we always go see the Nativity sets donated by local embassies and all the Christmas trees decorated in ornaments from other countries. Then it's outside to see the live Nativity (Mary was actually smiling this year since it was in the 50's) and then lots of pictures of the lights. They added these crazy gray-white LED lights last year and this year added some fuscia ones. They're actually quite pretty but hard to look directly at. This year we went up with a bunch of friends from the ward and law school so the pictures of other kids are Ethan's little friends.

First Snow!

So today we got hit with our first snowstorm of the year. It was actually kind of nice because it came down lightly most of the day. When Taylor got home from school we went out to enjoy it a bit. Instead of driving to a park to find some snow to use, we just took it off our car. Taylor was happy making a snowman while Ethan pummeled him with snowballs I handed him. Ahh.. family fun!

Trains at the Botanical Gardens

It has become a yearly Christmas tradition in D.C. for our playgroup to go see the train displays set up in the Botanical Gardens. They have amazing sculptures of the Washington Monument, Capitol Building, White House, etc made out of leaves and organic material that always amaze the adults. The kids meanwhile are enthralled by all the trains. You'll notice that Ethan is fuzzy in every single picture because he was so excited and couldn't stop jumping up and down and saying "train say choo-choo, chuga-chuga-whoo-whoo!".

Thanksgiving

For Turkey-Day we drove up to Cleveland and stayed with my brother Dave and his family. Another brother came along with his family and my parents as well. In all there were 8 adults and 8 children under the age of 7. It was crazy and loud at times but really nice to see all the kids play together and to be able to hang out as adults at night after then kids had gone to bed. The day after Thanksgiving dawned bright and early at 3:30 for the husbands who were all crazy enough to get up and fight the crowds trying to get their hands on a Wii. They were successful twice and it was so funny to watch how excited they were when they got home and the rest of the day as they played it (sharing with the little kids was a little hard for the "big boys"). One highlight of the trip was seeing Ethan and Ammon dressed up in their Halloween costumes. Who knew Nikki and I would buy the same costume for our kids?