Gingerbread Christmas Choo-choo train

Stin made sure we added many new wonderful Christmas traditions while Scott was away protecting the homeland . . . .this is one of them:

Han's Advent

Our most precious friends from the Belmont Ridge Ward -- the Han Family -- included us in one of their Christmas traditions -- The Advent. This included the 4 Sundays prior to Christmas Day. Each Sunday leading up to Christmas is focused on four themes: Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. Each included readings, hymns, stories, and lighting of a candle representing each of the four themes. Along with the previously mentioned activities, puppet shows were introduced which led to great amusement and mayhem! This new tradition added greatly to our present and hopefully future Christmas festivities . . . Love you Hans!

Luci's Spy-Theme Birthday Party

Luci celebrated her much anticipated 6th Birthday party with a Spy Theme and a few of her friends from school. Activities included fingerprinting, handcuffing (in anticipation of extraterritorial rendition), "Detect the Mole," Pizza feasting, obtaining Junior Special Agent credentials, defusing (or consuming, as the case may be) the Bomb (cake), special (black frosting) moustache disguise techniques, and a spy scavenger hunt, among other things (the rest is Classified!).

Virginia Chapter of the Cookie Lover's Club . . .

Nana Judy instigated a wonderful new tradition with the founding of the Cookie Lover's Club - a way for the generations to connect through the wonders of making, baking, and (of course) partaking of amazing cookie recipes. Luci was the recipient of this special intro package from Nana Judy to get the Virginia Chapter of the club established. Although, we all know that Tate and Kenz are the true mayordomo's of the club at this point!!! Yum, yum, yum!

The Lights on Temple Square . . .

Truly a highlight of our trip out West was our visit to The Lights on Temple Square, just a short walk from Margy/Ray's place. This little visit definitely got us all in the Christmas Spirit!! We even got a surprise visit from Nana Judy!

Thanksgiving with Grandma Margy and Grandpa Ray

We had such a great time with Grandma Margy and Grandpa Ray!

Gateway shopping, SLC

Part of our trip to Salt Lake included a little shopping excursion to the Gateway shopping center. Just had to grab a picture with the little shop called LolaBella for obvious reasons!!!

New Family Pictures . . .

Part of our special trip out to Utah during Thanksgiving included a crazy excursion down to Utah County to get some family pictures taken while we still have Mackenzie but including Lola. We thought we would take advantage of the incredible value offered by http://peekaboophotos.com/ . They totally went the second mile for us and we got some amazing photos, some of which are posted here.