Woods Ranch

The day after Christmas we took the family to Woods Ranch with some friends. Brayden tried really hard to master his new snowboard. 

Kylie and Leah are the best of friends.  

Maddie and Ellen 

The worst part about sledding is the snow that gets thrown in your face. 

Emily took a turn on the snow board too.  

Here comes our Dad!

We had a great day on the mountain. 

Christmas Day

Good Morning!

Some were awake at 6:45am and others weren't. 

Miss Kylie was thrilled with Santa's gift. Her Barbie house is taller than she is! She also loves the books, Princess in Black. She was happy she was given one she hadn't read yet. 

Hunter wanted a RuRoc snowboarding helmet. 

He knew they were quite expensive and was surprised Santa was able to pull it off. 

Brayden could never tell us what we wanted this year besides his favorite book series.

Santa brought him all 12 books and a 3D pen. 

All Emily wanted was a hover board. 

How fun!

All Maddie wanted was the new book series by her favorite author. 

Love, love my new picture. Can't wait to hang it up. 

My favorite gift this year. 

Maddie took this years family's pictures and painted it for me. 

She's getting better and better at these. 

I just love it!

Christmas Eve

We invited Grandma and Grandpa Heaton to our house again for our Christmas Eve shenanigans. 

This year Brayden asked if we could use rice krispie treats to make our nativity scenes instead of graham crackers. So we gave it a shot. 

Grandma, Brayden and Maddie. 

Daddy and Kylie

Emily

 

Brayden

Kylie

Our snowman Nativity scene.

Grandma and Grandpa quite often ask the kiddos how they are doing in their school work. They tell the kids to be good listeners to their teachers, do their homework and learn everything they can.  They love having the kiddo's read to them. Grandma spent many years at the school helping kids learn to read better. 

All of my kiddo's have enjoyed reading to their Grandma and Grandpa. 

The kids asked Grandpa to read our last wrapped Christmas book for this season. 

Soon Grandma and Grandpa had to go home.

We carried on with our evening. 

Brayden is old enough now to know that his Christmas Eve gift is pajamas. He was hoping he could talk mom into letting him open something different. No such luck buddy!

 I love my kiddo's

and even Brayden likes his new pajama's.  

Playing our stick game.  

We played Don't Break the Ice. 

My favorite, Rummy Cube

Kylies favorite game, Life.

 

And then it was time for these kiddo's to go to bed. The excitement was in the air. 

Nikko

The church lately has made some pretty exciting announcements lately. One of those announcements is a change is in the Young Women's Program. Not knowing exactly what to expect next year we challenged Emily to earn her Young Women recognition before the end of the year. To give her a little incentive we told her she could get a bunny if she succeeded. One of my favorite quotes, "She believed she could, so she did." And that is exactly what Emily did. 

She's pretty excited. After weeks of searching for a bunny that was never found, we did find a male rabbit looking for a forever home. The rabbit had no name. He was bought from a pet store and lived inside for several months. But then the owner had to get rid of him and gave him to her boyfriend who had grown up on a ranch. For the next year this little guy has been an outside rabbit on a farm. We don't have a farm for this little guy but we do have a decent back yard he can run around in. 

Emily was so excited. She decided to name her rabbit Nikko. 

During the day Nikko is put on a leash and can roam up to 30ft. Once we get our fencing done he can stay in the back yard with no leash and no fear from the many neighbors dogs. At night we lock him up in our rabbit coop to keep him safe. 

Living in Alton we had animals but they weren't pets. We knew ahead of time those animals were being raised for the stock show. They didn't come home with us. Nikko is our first family pet.