Christmas 2008!

Wow. We did it. I don't know how we did it...but we did it.:) Highlights: *Visiting Winder Dairy and seeing the "real" Santa Claus while eating scones and drinking hot chocolate and Egg Nog. Unreal. *Decorating our house with all of our "twismas detorations" *Wimmer family Christmas Party *Making gingerbread houses at Grandpa and Grandma's and winning a gold dollar for the prize! *Driving through the "Night Before Christmas" Street and "Sister Halls" House *Seeing Tory and Janie and AYSON! such a cute kid *Getting pulled by a sled at G and G's Christensen's *Sleeping underneath the Christmas Tree *Wonderful Christmas Lessons by both families *Leaving carrots for Santa and chocolate chip cookies for the reindeer...wait a minute! (Elle thinks she's pretty funny) *Seeing the footprints Santa left on our stairs. (elle just kept yelling Santa's so crazy!) *Opening presents with the kids downstairs. Makes me feel like a kid again. In fact it's better than when I was a kid. *Watching Elle get her Cupcake Maker and then making the worst Cupcakes I've ever seen but Elle thinking they are an absolute masterpiece. *Getting pulled behind Grandpa Greg's car in the sleigh with Brooklyn and Josh. "Keep going Grandpa!" *Celebrating T.J's Birthday. Happy Birthday TJ! *Girls Christmas Dinner- SO glad we could get together Lenzi- even if it was only for a few minutes:) *Movie and Game nights with Aunts and Uncles and Cousins I'm sure I'm missing more but this about sums it up. I'm so thanful for a wonderful Christmas season full of memories and thoughts about the true meaning of Christmas. We are so thankful for the birth and the life of our Savior Jesus Christ. Merry Christmas!!!!

Family Pictures...Finally!

We finally had our family pictures taken! Tell me I'm not the only one who really wants these done but dreads them at the same time. This time the actual taking of the pictures was pretty painless, thanks to Angie who did such a great job, but it's the scheduling and getting two kids, a husband, and myself ready. That and the fact that it was freezing and you can tell if you look at the kids little noses:) Anyway, we did it and I'm very happy with them...Angie you are wonderful!!!

Holiday Fun

Just random pictures from the last couple weeks. Elle was ADORABLE at her little Christmas Dance Concert. When it was over she just kept yelling "I did it, I did it!" We LOVE this little girl. Her and Cash are becoming better and better friends everyday. Why is it so impossible to get a picture of both kids looking at the camera at the same time...seriously it's almost comical. Elle loved going to "winter dairy" to get chocolate milk and scones and see Santa. (although she hid her finger the whole time cause it had a bandaid on it and she didn't want Santa to know she got hurt.) And as you can tell Cash LOVED sitting on santa's lap and can't wait for next year already. And somehow Jamie and I showed up in the exact same outfit. So weird! Good times.

A Weird Skin Disease?

Now that I have your attention...No Cash does not have some weird skin disease. This is simply what happens when you give him a sucker unsupervised. Toby thought it would be a good idea to give him a sucker to make the drive home go by a little faster for him...which I'm sure it did. This is what we found when we got him out of the car. Make the pictures bigger and check out the details:) But nothing a good shower couldn't take care of although I think we'll just stick with Cheerios from now on.

Traditions

If you're not in the mood for a sentimental post you may want to skip this and move on to the next blog.:) I'm in this sappy mood and decided to post and that's usually a funny combo. This last weekend we drove to infamous Preston Idaho to cut down our Christmas trees. I realized that in all my life I've only missed it 2 times...our Honeymoon and last year when Cash was born. It's something that absolutely means the world to me. I don't necessarily enjoy driving long distances with 2 small children, and everyone who knows me knows I HATE being cold. But for some reason that doesn't even matter with this. It's hard to imagine kicking off the Christmas season without it. The music, Aunt Connie's muffins and soup, ALL of cousins up in the mountains hiking around, hot chocolate, the lights...EVERYTHING! My family has so many traditions and some we've had to cut back on a little now that we have our own little family but there are some....like cutting down Christmas trees...that we just can't give up. And you know, it's funny on the drive home I got thinking alot about how much it must mean not just little old sentimental Josie but to all of my cousins because they were all there with all of their kids. It's seems like yesterday we were the kids sledding down the hills and riding the 4 wheelers and now it's our kids doing the same things. And that's the beauty of traditions. Passing our love of them down to our kids. We're now all grown up and have families of our own. It's up to us if we want to go to Rodeo week or cut down trees etc. No one's pressuring us or telling us what to do. We go because we WANT to. I don't know. Long boring post I know but I had such a good weekend and thought alot about this on the drive home. I missed my Grandpa so much up there, but am so greatful for a Grandpa and Grandma who kept our family so close and in so doing my cousins are some of my very best friends. Here's to a wonderful family tradition!!! Oh and we got a GREAT tree:)