The best was when we could hear them giggling in the morning and found them lying together in Caleb's crib looking at books! (Heather, notice the dog that Caleb is holding. He LOVES it and carries it around everywhere!)
The kids have enjoyed their gifts. Mitchell was really excited to know that Santa had come to our house. Seeing the gifts under the tree wasn't convincing enough. He had to make sure that he had eaten the cookies and milk we had left!
We hope you all have had a great Christmas day!
We are all excited about the Christmas season. We have enjoyed doing weekly advent that my uncle and aunt gave to us years ago. We have invited Clint's home teaching families over each week for dinner and had them stay for advent. Basically we just didn't want to sing alone. Mitchell really enjoys when the families have kids his age to play with. And they love taking turns blowing out the candles.
Mitchell was a dinosaur for the church party. He wore the same costume 2 years ago. He is a much more willing participant this time than last. We had to force it on him two years ago. Here is a picture of him with his three good little friends from the ward. (The costume has a dino head and gloves but it was too hot for him to keep them on.)
Saturday night we went to a local farm the was showing "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" and giving hay rides for free. We went on the hayride first then watched the movie two times. Clint was standing in line for doughnuts during the first movie and Mitchell didn't mind sticking around to watch it again!
Saturday, before the movie, was demo day. The county forced us to take our 30 year old metal shed down. It was a lot of work and we filled our trash can plus a kind neighbor's. Clint burned a big pile of wood and there is still a big stack of metal waiting to be picked up. It was a good little shed and we'll miss it. But it was nice to throw a lot of trash away that had collected there AND it will be nice to have a larger driveway to ride bikes on (and shovel in the winter).
Caleb was pretty sick for most of this past week. He was feverish for 4 days straight and near the end of the week got a pretty congested nose. Luckily after my brother, who is a chiropractor, adjusted him his fever broke and he was able to sleep better. This picture was taken during the sick period. He was a sad little boy. 
This is Caleb with his little girlfriend, Hannah. They get so excited to play together. We know that Hannah wears the pants of the relationship. She likes to bully him around, but he takes it like a man. One afternoon we found them outside holding hands on their way inside. As soon as we got the camera out Caleb let go to pose. But they had no problem re-enacting their affection for the camera!
We recently finished taking out our post and wall that separated a hallway and our family room. The county has a yearly clean-up project and sets out dumpsters in the neighborhood for us to throw out are garbage. That encouraged me to pull up the carpet and do my yearly tree trimming. The room still needed a lot of work as we reconstructed the ceiling to hide the channel that is reinforcing our support beam. We also needed to touch up the paint and mud the holes in the walls. We took out some great looking carpet (dark green and some nasty brown) that was hidden under the existing carpet. It was heavy and dirty work, but it all came together after Becca did most of the mudding and textured the ceiling. We refinished and carpeted the toy room as well.
This is a picture to Caleb riding Nick with Korrine's help. My family came up and we had a birthday party for Mitchell at the first of the month. 
