Christmas 2013

For pre-school Zade got to build little gingerbread houses, which he meticulously covered in little pieces of candy.  

Despite being married for 10 years, this is the first year of our married lives where we had Christmas in our own home. Now that we have 3 kids, it seems like a good time to start. :) Pennsylvania decided to make it feel more merry by dumping some snow so that the scenery was nice and white.  Tara's parents also came to visit for Christmas, which added more family fun.  Because her parent's flight came in on Christmas Eve in the evening, the kids ended up getting to bed later than normal, so when Christmas morning rolled around, all the adults were awake and the kids kept snoozing. Kind of the opposite of what we'd anticipated. :) 

Here's Tara's mom playing with the kids.

Here's roughly the scene the kids came downstairs to see Christmas morning.... minus two parent's guarding all the loot.

Aria ended up getting a big dollhouse and a couple of dolls to play with.

Zade loves building things, so he was given blocks.  He also loves monsters (the friendly kind), so he also received Lord Vampire's Lego castle.

Since Ryzen is just 6 months old, all he got was some baby food. :)  Here's Tara posing in her new coat.

Right after Christmas we drove down to Washington, D.C. and went to the temple there. It's huge, and setup very differently than the other temples we've gone to in the past.  It was a neat experience to visit.

Since Tara's mom's family all live on the east coast, they got together for a family party at her uncle Blair's house in the DC metro area.  Here are the 5 siblings lined up in birth order: Craig, Karen, Linda, Terry (Tara's mom), and Blair.

After the party, the kids had fun going swimming at the hotel.

For New Years, we decided to lay low this year.  However, Tara set out to create a long list of goals.  One of which is to stop drinking diet coke.

Some of her other goals include running the 24th of July Marathon in Salt Lake, having 3 vegetarian dinner meals a week, taking a dance class, etc...  I'm still working on the long-term goals I set last year (i.e. work out at least once a week to make sure my tummy doesn't get bigger than my chest, read scriptures daily, spend quality time with the kids each day, and work as hard as I can to get top tier publications so our family can have stability.)