There is no place like home for the holidays!

This month of December has been quite busy as it is for most of us. Nolan's parents moved into their newly remodeled home in Declo in the beggining of December, and as we were helping with that we were moving ourselves upstairs in the house here. Feels great to have all our stuff out of storage, but strange to be missing 2 people around the house now! We're glad they're not too far and we can still visit them whenever we want.
We had a great Christmas this year with a lot of firsts to go with it.
It was our first year of not traveling at all. It was a strange feeling celebrating Christmas Eve and opening the presents the next day with just four of us as opposed to 15 or more, but we were relaxed and able to make a lot of memories and traditions.
This was our first year staying completely healthy through all of December. I maybe attribute that to the no traveling :-)
The kids really got into Christmas and talked about it all December long. We did Elf on the Shelf which they both looked forward to every morning, and we also got this advent calendar that Nolan and I filled with activities for us to do as a family each night. The kids looked forward to that so much. Most activities were pretty simple like read Christmas books in a fort, make sugar cookies, or dance to a Christmas cd. We had a few bigger ones like go to Salt Lake City and see the lights and things like that. I'm really excited to start those traditions each year. We met up with some friends and family there who took the pictures for us, so hopefully I'll get some up on here sometime soon! Christmas Eve was an eventful day. We started the morning by making Gingerbread houses...Nolan and the kids really enjoyed getting into this. I'm not too talented. After cleaning that up we went to the shop and rode bikes. They found this sliding work bench and had fun pulling each other around in that while Nolan and I had an intense game of ping pong! Grace still loves this blanket, and calls it her Reindeer, it goes wherever we go. We went to the house and grabbed some lunch, hot cocoa and cookies and headed into the river to go kayaking. It was a really nice day, like 45 or something, and the water current was slow and it was such an enjoyable ride. Since the water is so low in the winter, there was an uncovered sand bar that we parked our kayaks on and ate our food. There was also a ton of frozen water and we slid around on the ice for a while before heading back. By the time we got home we had time just to do the Christmas Eve stuff. We opened pj's and sang songs, had a talent show, acted out the nativity, and read some Christmas books. The kids slept great and by 8:15 we decided it was time to wake them up. They were so excited to see the presents Santa left and they played with those all morning until we hurried and went to church at 9:30. It was great to go to church and come back and have presents to open. Thomas was happy to get the tool bench he's been asking for for awhile. Grace got her beloved pillow pet and a new quilt for her bed. I love how it turned out. Nolan got snowmobiling gear, and hopefully snow will soon be on its' way. I got a BOSCH, and have used it every day since. It helps that our hand beaters broke a week ago so I have nothing else to mix dough with. I also got some cute clothes. That night we had dinner with Nolan's family at Gary and Susy's house. It was a perfect day, I'll post about the rest of Christmas break soon! Here's a picture of the belly per request of the cousin. Feeling well, but can't believe I still have a few months left! This was another long post. I guess in my blogging absence I have become quite wordy! (Who am I kidding I've always been a jabber!)Love you all and hope you had a great Christmas as well!