It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

It seemed like a fairly slow start this holiday season and now Christmas has just creeped up on us. We went to my sister's holiday choir show & while it was really good - Lins had a solo & everything - it was more of a winter show. But we've decorated more and started wrapping presents and we just watched "It's a Wonderful Life" which is a family tradition for us. We are supposed to go down to Naples tonight by the harbor and check out Christmas lights with some families from our ward but it's been raining all morning so I'm not sure if that's going to happen since you have to walk it. We didn't want to look at Christmas lights from the car because Daniel's in his carseat backwards so it's not a good angle for him to see anything. Hopefully the rain doesn't spoil this fun activity because I'm looking forward to the cider afterwards too! We did have our ward Christmas party where Daniel got to see Santa so we have some fun pictures of that plus some pictures of Daniel trying to eat a jingle bell. Ya. That's my boy!

Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving, we went down to San Diego to my Aunt Sherrie's house. They've completely redone it, it looks great & they have an amazing view from their deck - you can see Sea World, the bay, & Tijuana. She can see Mexico from her house!!! (a la Sarah Palin). All of my siblings, minus Brent, my mom, my grandma Caroline, Grandpa Kelly, Grandma Sims, and Uncle Ashley & Aunt Becky came. We also got to meet one of Dan's kids and his family (Dan is my Aunt Sherrie's boyfriend - I don't know what to call someone you've been with for 11 years...?) The boys got to wear their First Thanksgiving outfits and Becca wore her new dress that she made - it's super cute and amazingly, neither baby spit up on it. While dinner was wonderful - I'm pretty sure it was the first time my Aunt's used her kitchen - and football was fun, it was most fun to see Daniel, Maddie, and Clayton with their Great-great grandma Sims. It's not too often you get to have something special like that. It was really sweet to watch her holding them and smiling. Then of course, as is tradition, we went to the movies and saw 4 Christmas's. It was freakin funny and Daniel was super good through the whole thing. All in all, it was a great Thanksgiving.

Great-great grandma Sims
A shot of Becca's dress, kinda
the view

The boys are very much into pulling on each others clothes & faces so here are a few shots we got that weren't like that