Here's a slide show of our family photo shoot at Union Station in Ogden. My friend Heidi's brother Shane took the pictures, and I love how they turned out. I especially love the ones of the kids. I wanted to wait to post these until after I sent out our Christmas cards so as not to spoil the surprise!

Here comes Santa Claus

We had our ward Christmas party last friday night, and we were lucky enough to have a special visit by Santa Claus. The kids were very excited to see Santa and sit on his lap. I think it's been two years since the kids sat with Santa, and the last time my dad was the mystery Santa. So this is the first non relative Santa the kids have seen. Kera was one of the first kids in line to see santa since she was sitting up front with her friends Kendall and Molly. Then I waited in line with Jacob and Michael. Kera sat on santa's lap twice, since dad didn't have the video camera ready the first time. The kids rattled off their lists for santa, and then when I put Michael on Santa's lap he was okay until he looked up and say that big white beard. Then nothing could console him after that, not even chocolate.
While we waited for santa to arrive, we had a few musical numbers, including some teenage boys from our ward who did a rockband version of Rudolph and Here Comes Santa Claus. Kera was sitting by her friends Molly and Samantha in the bottom picture. The date is obviously wrong on my camera, it's not actually 2004.

It's that time again...
Nothing says welcome to winter like a jaunt to the old sledding hill at the park. And technically it's not even winter yet, but the snow still came. This particular day we got dumped on. The kids and us parents were outside shoveling the driveway earlier, and since we were all in our winter clothes, I decided to take them over to the hill while Michael had his nap. These trusty old sleds were inherited when we bought our house almost 5 years ago, and they have held up for the most part until now. Jacob and Kera had fun sliding down the hill many times, until that is, when Jacob plowed over Kera with his sled. She was bending down to put her boot back on, when Jacob came down the hill and knocked her over. That put an end to our trip. And it was a good thing because it was starting to snow again, and hard. The picture of Jacob and Kera sledding together was pre-collision. Bring on the sleds!!