Halloween/Emery's birthday party to Christmas

Halloween was on a Saturday this year so it seemed like a good day to keep the kids entertained and not begging to go trick or treating at 1pm by having Emerys birthday party on this day. Luckily for me Emery loves having a halloween themed birthday party so it made putting her party together a lot easier when pintrest is full of halloween games for this time of the year.

Everyone had a good time playing games, for some reason every year all Emery asked for at her party is to have a room full of balloons to pop, so we had the spider nest were the kids had to pop all the balloons and find the one special spider egg. Treven and Halle were my helpers and did a great job helping me will a bunch of excited 6 year olds!

There always seems to be a school project to be done and Treven had a fun one that had to do with eyptian gods. He did a great job in making his model of Apis.

This year the high school football team made it to the champsionship game up at the Rice Eccles stadium against East high. Sadly they lost but Tyler loved getting to dress varsity, and looked good on the side lines! The kids loved getting out of school to come up and cheer on the Red Devils. Emery had the most fun running around with her good friend Letley.

November seemed to push on with Halle and the activity day girls getting to perform for our annual Christmas Relief Society night. They girls sounded amazing and looked so cute all dressing in white as angels. The kids couldn't contain the excitement of getting our Christmas stuff up this year, thanks to our good neighbor and friend Liz Grover who puts up their Christmas Nov. 1, and so we didn't put up as soon as the Grovers but by mid nov we had our Christmas up and ready for the season.

The week before and after Thanksgiving was full of ativities. The first was the birth of our new little addition to the Strong side, baby Isla was born to Lezlee and Brad. It was so fun to have a little baby to hold again. Halle, Emery and I went up to the lighting of the Traverse Mountain Christmas tree and say hi to Santa and Mrs. Claus. The girls had more fun getting hot choco with mom and listenting to the fun bands that played before the lighting. With school out during Thanksgiving the kids had fun playing with friends, having Thanksgiving at Grandma and Grandpa Strong's house and playing with all the cousins. We even did a little family date night and went out to eat with the kids and then went to the nickle arcarde to watch Treven clean up on the Jackpots!

We love starting off our December right with Grandma Carolee's gingerbread decorarting party. This year is was each family had a house to decorate and boy was it fun to see the adults get into it!

For our seeing Santa this year we suppported the high school girls basketball team and went down to the high school for breakfast with santa and got some really good entertainment by the girls basketball team. Those girls can sing and dance! Emery was just so excited to finally see santa again, since during november when we were ever at the mall we had to stop by and see Santa.

The best part of Christmas is when the kids have a little Christmas program and Emery is our last one. They usually only have one when they are in kindergarten and so it was fun to go with my mom and dad in tow and see all the fun songs and dance move these kids had been working so hard on.

 December brings fun snow activities and since we hadn't been skiing yet, and the first snow fall was one that dumped  lot of snow in a little amount of time, Emery and her friend suzee spent the day getting in as much sledding as possible. As soon as the other kids got home it was sledding some more.

Christmas brings family parties and Janette's is always the first one. We had a great time visiting with family, having at talent show were Tyler showed off his guitar skills while Treven played the piano and halle sang. Janette game the kids fun litte gift bags and of course we all ate ourselves silly.

Dec. 22 brought the Averett family in town and my kids were beyond excited to have them finally back in Utah. We had a fun time sledding, playing, having sleepovers, and playing some more. We took the kids to the temple to do baptism for the dead, then went up to see the lights at Temple Square. On Christmas Eve all the kids and I went skiing for the day and had a blast getting those kids out on the slopes and back on some Utah snow. After we had  quick Christmas Eve dinner with my mom and dad and then it was time to go up to Grandma and Grandpa Strong's to get the kids their Christmas PJ's and see the Strong cousins.

By the time we got home on Christmas Eve our Santa had dropped off our Christmas clothes. The kids got to open them and then it was time to get out the milk and cookies and go to bed. We had to wake up the kids this year on Christmas morning but that didn't mean they weren't excited. The best was watching them all open up their present of underwear and see Halle face of embarrassment! Tyler had the best gift of getting a weight set and then for his first workout was having to haul it over from Janette's garage and put it together. This is what happens when you reach teenagerhood. Treven had the best gotach gift since he was the one to get the new Halo remote for the xbox, someting that Tyler has been dying to get. The picture of Treven's face says it all, but I should have gotten Tylers face of "what the"! The girls both got American girl dolls and kindles while Tyler got a new iphone and Treven finally got a phone number to his phone. The fun didn't stop there since we went up to Grandma and Grandpa Strongs for Christmas breakfast and then it would be back to our house for Grandma and Grandpa Averett's Christmas party at our house........