Russian Dinner

A NEW tradition! Jacob and I have decided on a new Christmas holiday tradition, and that is keeping the Russian culture a part of our hearts and lives.  I mean that is where we met and where we served our missions which made us the people that we are today.  We want to make sure that we keep the culture and the people we love in our lives to never forget those amazing memories.  So we went shopping, and we made borsch and blini!  The look, the smell, the taste!  It just took me back to sitting in Baba Katya's house eating delicious borsch and blini. I love it!   We had the Baty's over for Russian dinner and the kids actually liked it!  We then had to finish up the night with the kids doing pottery.  They are cute kids!

Surprise Date

We spent 2 weeks at my parents house for Christmas and we had a great time being there.  Jacob was so awesome going to all my parties and spending time with our family. SO I surprised him with a date just for us.  I love him so much and it makes me happy to try to to surprise him and let him know how much I love and appreciate him.  We went to Rodizio's Grill and walked around the new bookstore.  I love this man of mine.

 

Christmas

Christmas is a magical time. I love the spirit of Christmas, spending time with family, remembering the birth of our Savior, serving those around us, eating food, giving and receiving gifts, it is just an amazing time!

At the Christmas Eve party, Grandma had a great idea and she had all the great grandkids gather together and they read The Night Before Christmas together, we have some smart little kids who are good readers! It was fun to see them all together with Grandma.

CHRISTMAS MORNING!

Baby Groot! I love him!

An injury book for dad from Audrey hehe

Cool lamp and hat Jake!

I think if possible this should be a new Christmas Day tradition!  The first snow on Christmas day.  We bundled up and drove to Eaglewood Golf Course.  It was perfect new snow and we were the only ones sledding the whole day!  The boys built a jump and mom and I came up with our own way of tandem sledding.  It was a great way to spend Christmas afternoon together.

My handsome man and decked out Russian like

Me and mom!

Welcome Beautiful Evelyn Rose Harris

This little girl has already stolen my heart. I love her so so much and she is so sweet.  She came into the world right on her due date and she came quickly! We saw her when she was born, and we also went up to see her Christmas Eve day.  Her sweet mommy and daddy are such good parents and want to do their best at doing all they can for her.  We took her on her first walk and had a great time!  Sami texts us pictures every day and I love having little updates on this girl, she is growing already!

Kendall Cousin Christmas Party

This Kendall cousin party turned out so great! Stephanie did an awesome job planning out the activities and cousin bonding.  I am going to have to get some more pictures of the activities, but you had a word scramble, a Christmas quiz and ate pizza and snacks.  The next thing was to make snowmen! Haha there were 3 teams and we picked one person to be the snowman, wrapped them in wrapping paper and cut out buttons, a nose and scarf.   Another activity was a Christmas light/decoration scavenger hunt.  We split into 3 cars and had to drive around taking pictures of different decorations on the houses, colored lights, 3 blowup decorations in one yard, anble inflata guy on the roof, Disney Themed, Charlie Brown themed, a nativity, Santa and 3 reindeer.....it was a blast!  I had Zach, Avery, and David in my car and we had a great time driving and searching.  After that we had a Disney Sing along, a movie, and Christmas Carols.  It was a good time! I sure do love my crazy family.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir Concert

I won!  I got so excited!  In order to get tickets to go to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert you have to win a raffle and one day my tickets just came in the mail! So Jacob, and I, and mom and dad went out to dinner at the Blue Iguana, saw the Christmas lights and went to see the Muppets and Santino Fontana.  I loved it!  Every time one of the Muppets came on I was so excited!

Also, the penguin candy ornament was just so cute! We had a great time playing and listening to the great music getting in the Christmas season.

 

The Aquarium

 I loved the aquarium at the old location and I love it even more at the new location!  Sami got some free tickets so Mom, Dad, Jake, Sami, Matt, Grandma T, and I and Jacob went!  We had a great time looking and learning about all of the first and other creatures there. The world and nature are so incredible! I am thankful for God's creations.

 The new aquarium has funny bubble things you can go in to make you feel as though you are in their world.

 Turtle Turtle!

 The Jelly fish are my absolute favorite! I could watch them all day. I want some in my house...

The penguins were hysterical! They ran around, jumped, played & pushed each other in the water ha!