Christmas Day!

My favorite part--opening the stockings!
The first thing the kids saw was Breje's gift from Grandma and Grandpa. Grandpa built her a huge wooden chest for the end of her bed and drove it out to our house weeks before Christmas. She loved it!

Yes, that's Trayson reading his new book, smack dab in the middle of all that Christmas fun!

Kutter had desperately been wanting a camo hat "just like Simon's". It seriously got his biggest grin of the day!

I love how shocked my kids are that Santa actually got them a wii. I'm pretty sure they had resigned themselves to never joining this century!

One last shot of the carnage, before we packed it all up and got ready for church.

It was really such a fun morning and so great to be able to just wake up in our own beds!

"Pretend Christmas Eve"

Christmas eve has always been my very favorite part of the entire holiday season. This year the best part of Christmas Eve was that my whole family was willing to celebrate one night early and have a "pretend" Christmas Eve -- complete with all our favorite traditions -- so that we could spend it with them but still have Christmas morning in our own home. It meant a lot to me that they were so willing to go our of their way to share this special time with us, but also so understanding about us wanting to have some Christmas memories in our own home (not to mention eliminating so much of the stress involved in having Christmas for 6 somewhere away from home!)
This year we kicked things off with a new tradition -- "minute to win it"! Forgive the blurriness of the picture, but my camera could not deal with the supersonic speeds the kids attacked kleenex boxes with!

The only thing sillier than that was wrapping each other in whole rolls of toilet paper!

Finally, a game of 7-ll for all the kids -- definitely more noisy and chaotic than we had anticipated, but fun for all! I loved that these games were fun for both the tiny kids and the older kids. It was great to see them all enjoying each other so much!

Of course, the highlight of the evening is always presents! We couldn't wait to give Lucy hers, but she mostly wanted to hide her candy in the wrapping paper to keep it safe!

Trayson got a hug from Simon for his cool horse trailer ....

.. and Hayley has definitely taught her girls how to be adequately thrilled for each gift!

My girls were completely thrilled with all their loot ....

... but it's fairly obvious the boys will be competing with Grandpa for playtime with their fun new helicopters! Gee, I wonder who picked those out?

I totally loved capturing these shots the next morning, of all the kids gathered around and playing with their newest toys, just like every Christmas morning!

Preschool Christmas Party

With only four days after the Wolfley Family Party until we returned to Utah for more holiday fun, we still had to squeeze in the holiday parties for the kids at school. Brielle's party kicked off with a bang when she finally got to wear the hand print antlers that she's been dying to show me for days!I then had the pleasure of hearing her sing "Rudolph" and several other Christmas carols with her friends -- don't you think the red nose just makes it perfect? She did.

The highlight of the day was waiting for St Nick to show up. Now, Brielle has not always been a fan of the big guy in red. In fact, she has repeatedly refused to even look in his direction whenever he's near, but this year she assured me things would be different. She even practiced telling him that she wanted a "pink La la loopsy" doll for Christmas, over and over in the car on the way there. When her teachers announced that he was on his way, Brielle was the first kid over so that she'd be able to sit close to him. Thrilled, I stepped back and waited to snap that perfect picture when Santa walked into the room....

... this is what I got!

She practically flattened the little girl next to her in her frantic efforts to get as far away from him as possible. She wouldn't even take her candy cane. She did, however, calm down enough to demand the opportunity to give him the picture she'd colored for him!

The Wolfley Christmas Party

The Wolfley family party is always an enormous affair, simply because there are so dang many of us! We tend to make even a church gym feel cozy and a bit overcrowded, so we're pretty lucky to have that option. It's a bit of a challenge to wrangle this group into any kind of organized activity, but Jason and Chelsi gave it a pretty good shot this year.
I tend to spend quite a bit of my time during these parties trying to locate various groups of children so that I can get pictures of all the fun. I found two willing models (Brooklyn and Brielle) when all the kids had disappeared behind the stage curtains. ...... apparently, all that posing looked like loads of fun!Ryann, Bella, Jaeli, Brielle, and Brooklyn make quite a beautiful crew, yes?

There was a craft table set up so that the kids could make pretty Christmas tree decorations. Someone pulled out glitter and stickers and I thought I'd never be able to tear Brielle away!

There were several "minute to win it" games for the rest of us. Jody actually won this one, by drawing the best Christmas scene on top of his head!

I love this one, it's just some (I couldn't fit the entire line in the picture) of the grandchildren lining up to recieve christmas gifts from Jody's dad. I'm pretty sure it was longer than any line I saw for Santa in the mall this year!

We also had tons of great food, a slide show by Kaycee, and tons and tons of noise!

Pardon the Interruption

I have been trying to continue my Christmas posts for two days now and have just not been able to face them. Have you ever been so worried about something that you felt like some one's pushed the pause button-- every one's rushing around but your stuck in slow motion and completely unable to focus? Everything is blurry and I just can't seem to function properly.
My brother-in-law has cancer. It's not new, many of you know that he's been living with it for years now, but we don't talk about it a lot. He's gotten so good at pretending he's fine and we kinda like pretending to believe him. It makes it easier to keep moving. Recently, however, he's been in such pain that he can't pretend anymore. I wish I could say that the worst part of that was having to face the reality that cancer is still there, but it's not. The worst part is wondering why that pain is there. Worrying that nothing can make it better. Knowing there's nothing I can do to fix it and being so far away that I can't even give my sister and her family a hug. Cancer seriously sucks, people!
Anyway, I'm trying really really hard to remind myself it won't do any good to be angry. I keep finding myself wanting to hit something and say lots of bad words, but I'm trying to remember that the one thing I can do is pray. So if you're reading this, say a little prayer for your family, and mine, too.

Yes, it's been pretty much forever since I've posted, but I do have an excuse. My computer died -- as in seriously bit the dust. And then I took about a million pictures -- which completely overwhelmed me. And then I got really really lazy. I finally forced myself to face the situation and that's when I realized how many of my most adorable pictures involve Hayley's children and had to face the facts that since her sweet husband (the computer wiz) is the only reason that I am actually able to download my pictures (let along blog them) the least I could do is put them out there on the net so that everyone (including my sis) could adore them.

Seriously, they are about the cutest kids ever and I am so grateful for the bonds that my kids share with their cousins. To make this a little more bearable for all of us, I am going to attempt to break down Christmas into only slightly more manageable compartments, beginning with the annual party and Grandpa Ones' house. This party is sometimes the only day all year that my kids get to hang with my cousin's kids -- and they seriously love it.

Check out how much fun Brielle and Sienna are having with Holly and Becky's daughters! (Do you love how they are all color-coordinated? We totally didn't even plan that! ) And Breje and Courtney have shared the sweetest friendship since the first party that they remember.

The kids usually grab a ton of food and then rush off to the basement to hide from the adults -- who are only too willing to play along. That made it pretty difficult to find victims for my camera, but the few smiles I caught show just how much they look forward to this party.

I love that I caught this EXTREMELY rare shot of Kutter and Simon willing to play GQ. Brielle and Sienna, on the other hand, gave me SEVERAL DOZEN frames of this pose!

This was merely the first evening in a 3 week long Christmas celebration -- but what a way to kick it off!