A visit with Santa

We made our traditional visit to the mall to visit Santa yesterday. I thought it would be fun to post the past years photos so you can see how the kids have changed.




2008

2007


2006

all I could find for 2005was this crappy picture :(

2004
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2003




2001

Lance and I have come to realize that family traditions are very important in keeping a family close. We are both grateful for the traditions we were raised with - they gave us stability as we grew up. Each year we seem to make a few new family traditions but there are some that we have stuck to for many years. Some examples are: taking my mom with us to eat dinner at the Cracker Barrel and drive through the Spanish Fork Christmas Light display ( we even did this when she was in the midst of her Chemo), spending Christmas Eve at my mom's with the Jeppson cousins, reading "A Christmas Dress for Ellen" (the Jeppson family Christmas story), reading Luke 2, opening Christmas jammies on Christmas Eve at my mom's, spending Christmas Day at Lance's parents with the Madigan cousins, I pick out a special ornament for the kids each year, using our many many advent calendars, watching the old animated Christmas movies like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman. These traditions, for us, define the season and make it more magical. I would love to hear what other people do each year to make Christmas special!

Anyone still out there?

I haven't blogged much lately - it seems that most of the info I would put on the blog I already put on facebook. For that reason I am not sure anyone is reading the blog anymore. But I have been thinking lately that about how I use the blog to refer to when I do my scrapbooking so I am going to try and be more faithful with it. My biggest frusteration is what a pain it is to upload photos to the blog. Facebook is just so much easier. If anyone has suggestions for making it easier I would love to hear them. I realized that I haven't blogged about Lance turning the big 4-0! I just want to say that I have the best husband ever! I know other people say that but truly- for me - he is the best husband I could ever imagine. He is a great dad, super supportive of all my crazy endeavors and never complains about doing half (or sometimes more than half) of the boring stuff that keeps our house running. He is truly my best friend and I still love staying up late and talking to him! I love watching him wrestle and tickle the kids. I am grateful that he works so hard to provide a comfortable life for us. We are truly blessed. Some of the little things he has done for me lately that have really meant a lot to me are: clean out the carport so I can park the van in there (it is so nice not to have to scrape the windows in the morning!), taken ALL the kids to go Christmas shopping, hauled numerous heavy boxes full of Christmas decorations up and down the stairs, bought me a new vaccum and then used it to vaccum the house, put up my mom's Christmas lights in the snow/rain when he already had a cold, he is always willing to take care of the kids when I want to go out with my girlfriends, he lets me drag him to events like the New Moon preparty and midnight showing without making to many sarcastic comments, lets me take pictures when he is covering stories for the newspaper and then makes sure I get the credit, he is always prepared and willing to give priesthood blessings to family and friends whenever it is needed. I could go on but I think you get the picture that he is an all around great guy -sorry ladies he is taken!