Russ and Ridge

Jeff's Christmas weekend Sandcastle at Hanalei

Christmas 2011

Wow. Christmas really is a season. We set up for a Cook Christmas before Thanksgiving (Rusty rallied the kids to plead with me for an early set-up). I just took down the decorations yesterday (January 16th). All except the tree. Per Rusty's birthday request the tree stays up until his birthday on Sunday. We had a great year. I think I have already put posts up about some of the events of the season. Lots of little things made for a great holiday. We enjoyed keeping it quiet at home, but have to admit we missed the madness of big family gatherings. The actual holiday really stretched out. We had a Cook family night at Mike and Holly's. We opened all of the Cook family gifts. Funny story about that, but you'll have to wait. We had appetizers for dinner and tried to do the nativity. We attempted this with the little people set. However, while the adults read the story and tried to manage/videotape the event, Kyleigh was trying to juggle the parts of Mary, Joseph, the animals and the shepherds. Katelyn was the angel and Naiya was baby Jesus. The babies played the part of destructors and the babies won by a landslide. We moved on to opening gifts and then watched The Santa Claus. We all got very nice gifts and the kids were soooo excited for their pillow pets. Aliya and Ridge wouldn't get out of their cute little camp chairs. We had a great night. Our next Christmas was the actual Christmas. Our first ever Christmas morning at home. I had an egg sausage casserole prepared and ready to pop in the oven. Santa left us some grape juice so we had a yummy breakfast after we saw what Santa had brought us. Santa doesn't wrap our gifts, but lays them out so we can see what he brought right away. Ridge found a new spring loaded horse, which he and the girls all fell in love with. Kyleigh and Katelyn each found a new pair of purple heelies and an indian dress up outfit, among a few other fun things. Rusty got a cheese making kit and hunting backpack and I got a new pasta maker. We went to church and had the opportunity to hear from Jeffrey R. Holland, who was on vacation and came to our ward. When we came home we opened the gifts from my family and from each other. Once again, we all loved our gifts. The kids were so excited to be giving gifts to others. It just might have been my very favorite part of the season. Kyleigh gave everyone a stuffed animal that she and Rusty had stuffed and sewed. Katelyn picked out nice gifts for everyone and hovered over them as they were opened. Ridge didn't really understand turns so he ripped his open with lots of excitement, then helped everyone else with theirs. Mike and Holly came over in the afternoon. We spent our time playing with new toys, making cheese, and eating. We went with easy and had a coldcut sandwich tray with pie. Our cheese turned out really good. Who knew that making mozzarella cheese was so easy? Jason Probst also joined us for the afternoon. I bet he never expected to be making cheese on Christmas day. It's always an adventure at our house. The next Christmas was just a couple of days later when we got packages from Aunt Karla and Steve. Aunt Karla sent Katelyn a new doll and whole cache of clothes. Move over American Girl dolls, handmade with love is so much better. The other package Aunt Karla sent came a few weeks later and we had another night of excitement. We thought for sure it was over and we were so grateful for all of the nice gifts. However, on Sunday we were cleaning out the garage and Russ opened a suitcase full of gifts from Merrill and Nancy that they had stored while they were here in September. He forgot to tell me and forgot they were there. So yet again we opened presents. The kids thought it was the best thing ever. We certainly can't complain about Christmas being over in 1/2 an hour. Plus our tree was still up so it was as festive as ever. I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas.

Progressive Dinner

I believe it was in 2006 when we first joined in a holiday progressive dinner with the Petersons. We lived in Silver City at the time and have done it every year since. Each year different families join in and go from house to house for a several course meal. This year the Herrs participated. The Porters were visiting the Petersons from Silver so they were there also. A few years ago we added to the tradition with a two step at our house. We dance to the song two step round the Christmas tree. It was especially fun this year because the Herrs love to dance and the Porters are from Silver, only 30 minutes from the two step capitol of the world, Cliff, NM. We were responsible for dessert and I busted out the chocolate fountain with all the goodies. We are always thankful for the Petersons, our Hawaii family.

Random December

Walking in Daddy's shoes- Ridge loves to play in Rusty's shoes. Decorating ornaments- We made snowman ornaments for our ward festival of trees tree. Lots of glitter on upside down lightbulbs with beads for facial features and buttons. We dressed them up with felt clothes. Our theme was snowmen at night, so we also made ornaments with key phrases from the book, like ice cold cocoa and sledding-wahoooooo! I am still finding glitter.

I love this picture of the kids dressed in Christmasy Sunday clothes before church.

Decorating cookies- What is Christmas without decorating sugar cookies. Rusty is a sugar cookie artist. The kids were inspired by his work and spent lots of time laughing at mine. Ridge ate frosting and ran around naked. Rusty is hiding him from the camera in this picture and we were all holding our breath that he didn't turn on the cookies and ruin them.

One morning I slept in and Kyleigh decided she wanted to bring me breakfast in bed. Her and Rusty made it all up with a flower in a vase and everything. It was fun, but the pictures of me were scary so you don't get to see those. Katelyn was also sleeping in, and woke up just as I was finishing. Rusty went in to tell her good morning and he said her eyes lit up like the Christmas tree when she saw the tray. She asked if that was for her in an awed voice. He couldn't tell her no so he went down to prepare another breakfast in bed for Katelyn. She was so excited that we decided that needed to be a tradition. However, we couldn't displace our beloved birthday pancake men. So we put it on the calender for the girls' half birthdays. How fun.

Friends on the beach

I promise we didn't plan the red and white, but when we saw the pattern Jeff and Mike switched so we could take this picture.

Snow Day

I decided we needed a snow day if we were going to stay in Hawaii for Christmas. I called up Mike and Holly and our snow loving friends, the Petersons to get them on board. One Sunday after church we headed to Kokee, where you can always count on a low(er) temperature. Lucky us, it really was a chilly 59 degrees with a bonus of rain. We huddled around Mike's fabulous fire pit (a drum from a washing machine). The Petersons brought their famous, and still secret, mexican rolls. We had it without the rolls, and dipped chips in it. We had cheeseburger soup and rolls for dinner. We all brought our old mismatched socks and had a "snowball" fight. Then, to top off all the fun we made some of the fake, just add water snow. We threw it in the air and pretended it was snowing. See below, you would never have guessed we were 30 minutes up the mountain from the beach.