Christmas 2012

We had a wonderful Christmas, celebrating our Savior's birth and visiting with family.  This year it was especially fun watching the kids excitement and understanding.

***Most of the pictures from our Colorado trip were borrowed from Sarah's Facebook - thank you Sarah!***

One evening before we put the kids to bed we decided to drive around town and look at Christmas lights.  The kids loved it, and Jeff and I did too!  There were some really fun neighborhoods, and Jonathan was really excited to find Santa Clause and one of his elves spreading holiday cheer in an especially festive neighborhood.  Jonathan climbed right up on his lap, but Kellen wasn't so sure about it and wanted Mommy and Daddy in the picture too :-)

 

The kids were very excited to get to open presents from their Arizona grandparents a few days early!  Here they are showing off their super cute and very warm new slippers while playing with some new toys!

 

Even Madelyn received a pair of slippers!  I can't wait for her to arrive so we can put them on her!

Daddy's shirt from Australia and a neat booklet with information about his birth year.

Trying on their snow gear while packing for Colorado. It was 65 degrees in Arkansas this day, but the kids insisted on keeping their outfits on inside the house while playing.

Heading to Colorado for Christmas!  The weekend before Christmas we headed out to Colorado!  We split the drive between 2 days, stayed a week, and then took 2 more days to drive home.  We had great weather, the kids did awesome, Daddy did all the driving, and Mommy was much more comfortable than she was even hoping for both the drive out there and back.

They day after we arrived we enjoyed attending the Nelson (Jeff's Mom's family) family Christmas party.  Kellen immediately took a liking to Tina and hung out with her for a lot of the party.

We had a fun white elephant gift exchange, and Kellen ended up with some super cute accessories from the kids exchange.

It was so much fun getting to see the Nelson side of Jeff's family!

Great picture of Jeff's mom with her good friend Kitty!

Courtney and Candace

  

Christmas Eve Jeff's siblings all came over and we opened presents! Titus with Gramma and Grampa Wedding.

Candace and Jimmy

Candace received a beautiful scarf that Sarah bought in Bangladesh!

Gramma Karen and Jonathan

Beautiful tree and gifts!

My gorgeous sister-in-laws!  Stacy and Sarah

Jimmy, Candace, and Titus!

Me and the Hubbs!

John and Karen - aka Grampa and Gramma!  We had so much fun being with you guys for Christmas, thank you!

We woke up Christmas morning to some beautiful snow!

We had 3-4 inches, which was a perfect amount for the kids to play in and do a little sledding. Little did we know when we headed to Colorado with hopes for a white Christmas, that we would have had a much whiter Christmas if we had stayed in Arkansas.  Christmas day dumped Central Arkansas with 8-10 inches of snow, on top of ice and wind, leaving 200,000 people without power for days.  Our neighborhood was without power for 2 days, and I am so thankful we were nice and warm in Colorado during that time!

Both kids really enjoyed their first experience sledding!

We enjoyed visiting the Denver aquarium one day!

And we enjoyed visiting with Gramma Lillian (Jeff's grandmother on the Ogan side) while we were in Colorado too!