Merry Christmas

We headed over to my mom and dad's place on Christmas eve. I always grew up celebrating on Christmas eve and waiting until midnight to open presents. The tradition is still there...though with 3 little ones it gets harder and harder to keep the kids up without meltdowns and grouchy faces. Anyway, my mom cooks amazing and had tons of food and we filled up so much. Probably my favorite part of the whole evening was the great food. We didn't torture the kids and opened presents early, since my brother had to work that night. Thanks mom and dad for the amazing generosity. Then we headed over to the LA Temple to see the lights...another one of our traditions. It was such a nice way to wrap up Christmas eve with being on the Temple grounds. Kind of turned my thoughts to how people must have felt to hear of the birth of Christ and how awesome was the faith of the believers.
Anyway, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Veronica taking a picture of us by our tree. We took the kids to this neighborhood in Woodland Hills that puts on a huge light display. I even brought some hot chocolate for us to bribe the kids to being good. It worked! Bribery has been my best weapon as a parent...I mean rewards have been such helpful tools. Christmas morning, the kids checking out what Santa left in their stockings.

I ventured out to the zoo with the kids...luckily my brother and sister-in-law were there to assist with the kids. The pink flamingos are so pretty but stink so bad.

Here we are at the ward Christmas luau. I picked this picture because I love how Vanessa is just gazing at Jeff and David is just full of silly faces lately.

This was Santa...looking a bit slim.

I don't know if David was really impressed by Santa, but he thought that if he kept getting back in line he would give him more candy. . . didn't really work!

Veronica was the first to spot Santa and the first in line. She didn't want to sit on his lap.

We were arguing right before we came because I made her wear those little pants...she said she looked ugly and hated pants. Us mother's can be so annoying...he he.

An actual family shot...that I don't hate.

The girls. Veronica has this weird thing about picking the sock lint from Vanessa's toes and then smelling her feet. I don't know where she gets these little quirks from....but Vanessa loves it.

I made chocolate mousse a couple of weeks ago. It turned out amazing...the second time around!

Sometime around the 7 month mark Vanessa started to rock back and forth and kind of lean forward enough to move. She now has the crawling thing pretty good. She still kind of looks like a robot and sometimes she'll get her arm caught underneath her but she is definitely moving. It's nice but kind of annoying...now I have to actually make sure she doesn't make her way to the stairs or into the trash or some kind of trouble.