Zavoral Villa!

I'm excited to report that my efforts to have a Christ-centered Christmas were successfully achieved!  (My very detailed thoughts about Santa are in this post:  It's All About Santa  and my ideas of how to make Christmas more Christ-centered are in this post:  Solutions for Santa  )  I'll admit, it was a total bummer that we weren't with any family. But we made the most of it. It was nice to focus completely on our little boys and enjoy a quiet Christmas eve and morning with fresh fallen snow. It was such a joyful Christmas!! Here is the Baby Jesus cake I made. Tanner was so excited to sing happy birthday to baby Jesus and blow out the candles. He wanted it to be his own birthday, too. I told him- that's one great thing about Baby Jesus' birthday. Everyone gives presents to everyone! Santa education this year was extremely easy since Tanner thinks that Santa "Clause" is someone with big "claws," sharp teeth and has a big roar. I promise he ca...

On Christmas Sunday, we enjoyed a great day at church. Jeremy sang bass in the choir and I directed the choir. I also helped teach a really special lesson with the young women. Our boys looked so cute in their Christmas outfits! I tried to make them match with clothes that I already had. And then Jeremy and I ended up matching them, too, without realizing it! Tanner was not in the mood for taking pictures. (He never seems to do well with family shots). And poor little Dallin fell off the bench twice because he was so excited at all the faces that Leighsa's son was making while taking our pictures. Here's what we got: Our little girl was still with us, too! Baby's first Christmas! Tanner's 3rd Christmas! We bribed him with a cookie to make him smile in the family shots. Eventually we got this one below. It's not the greatest as far as angles and lighting, but I think we all look pretty good!! This marks me and Jeremy's 8th Christmas married and our 1st Christmas ...

I think our tree sat for more than a week before we actually decorated it. Tanner didn't break any ornaments this year! It helped that the tree was on carpet this time.  Tanner was very helpful with the ornaments. He even got to put the star on the top! Dallin was sleeping. We also had Leighsa's daughter with us, so she helped decorate, too. Ta-da! So my friend Leighsa had a family emergency to take care of in northern MN. She decided it would be best to leave her daughter here, so she got to come to our house! We kept her until Leighsa was able to come back, which meant we got to have a daughter in the family for 9 days. Also, Leighsa's teenage son stayed with us for most of the time, too. So we were blessed to have a full house of kids. I decided that having older kids is a great idea because they play with the younger kids and help do chores! I also decided once again that schools in general start way too early in the morning (I'm not a morning person). I guess I...