First Food!

Harvey's stocking was stuffed with baby food. He was one week short of five months on Christmas so we figured we would give some rice cereal a try.

 He looks so convinced right here.  He always pulled this disgusted face.  But he kept it and and kept opening up for more.

 Mostly he works on getting his bib in his mouth.  I guess we could say our first go was a success but he doesn't love it he just doesn't gag.

Merry Christmas

My kids were WAY excited for Christmas this year.  I heard Addie and Demzi come out of their room at 4:45, I told them they had to go back in their room until at least 6 or until Tad woke up.  At 5:15 Liam came out of his room and I told him the same thing.  He thought we should just wake Tad up since it was Christmas and he'd be excited.  I told him he would just need to wait a little while longer.  Next thing I knew Tad was in my room crying saying, "Liam keeps burping in my face!" This was at 5:45.  At that point we figured we may as well let them be officially up.  The kids all came in and sat on our bed while we read from Luke 2.

Then we headed downstairs and let the kids start on their stockings. 

It is never a good idea to wake a sleeping Tad.  Luckily he found some gumballs in his stocking and all was right in the world again.

The kids chose to open their Santa presents first.  Then they handed out the presents that they had gotten for each other.

The rest of the morning was spent playing.  Tad got some cool dinosaur stamps from Addie that he was very excited about.

There was a little karaoke party with the girls' new karaoke machine.

Tad and Liam both got outside toys, Liam this flashrider and Tad a scooter.  We got our first snow storm of the year on Christmas eve so they ended up testing them out inside the house.

After playing for a few hours we headed Benson's.  The kids were able to see what Grandma, Grandpa and Steph got for Christmas.  Then they opened up their gifts from grandma and grandpa.  Grandma and Grandpa spoiled us all.  The kids were all so excited. 

We left from Bensons to the BINGO party at my parents'.  The kids look forward to this every year.  Tad was feeling grumpy before it started so papa took him to the prize table to show him what he could get.  He found a light up bouncy ball he really wanted and their stash of dinosaurs.  Once the game started he ended up just checking back every now and again to pick another prize, whether he had earned a BINGO or not.  All the kids had tons of fun.

The big prize was a date book, for just the price of a hug.  The kids were all super excited.  

Moore Christmas Party

Kris's Moore side of the family had their annual Christmas party on the same day as our ward. IT was fun to be able to get together and see everyone. They started out with lunch and then they had a Jimmy Fallon style lip sync battle. They had some really funny ones.  For our family we had all the Benson grandkids lip sync to the muppets twelve days of Christmas.  

After that they had a few games and a photo booth with props (the only thing I bothered to take pictures of).  My kids were not feeling very cooperative about getting their pictures taken but liked playing with the stuff to try on.

Santa Visit

The kids were super excited to see Santa at the ward Christmas party this year.  He was tons of fun.  He came into the cultural hall where we were all eating breakfast. We sang a few Christmas songs together and then he had the kids come sit around him while he talked about the true meaning of Christmas.  He told the kids he had the best Christmas ever because he got to give to so many people. Then he told the kids, "be less selfish and more elfish this Christmas."

After that he moved off into a little room and each kid was able to sit on his lap and get a candy cane. He didn't ask any of them what they wanted for Christmas but instead asked them what they were going to do more elfish for Christmas.  I loved that my kids came away with focus being less on getting and more on getting.

Loose Tooth Demzi

Demzi went on a tooth losing spree at the end of November/early December.  She is funny because once she realizes her tooth is loose she usually has it out in the space of a week (unlike Addie who hates to wiggle them so it usually drags on for a month or more).  

One night at dinner she told me that her tooth really hurt. I asked if I could see if it was wiggly enough to pull yet.  I couldn't believe how loose it was when she pushed on it with her tongue! It was barely hanging by a corner.

She was terrified to pull it though.  So I just told her it would just have to come out another day when she was ready.  So she reached in, gave it a little twist.....

and it was out! This brought her total teeth lost up to four.

A week later she came in and told me another one of her teeth hurt and within a few minutes she had that one out too  Funny girl, at least she doesn't need me to pull them. That's not something I enjoy at all.

Happy Birthday Kris

Kris was going to be out of town for work on his actual birthday so we surprised him the day before he left with a mini birthday party. The kids made this cute sign/giant birthday card.  Addie made the bubble letters and then they all drew pictures and decorated it. 

Then we gave him his presents.  Tad was so in birthday mode at this point that he just stood by Kris and opened all of them for him.  At one point I think he took one of his presents to the rocking chair, bonked himself on the head and started to open it.

Then we had brownies for dessert.  I was out of candles at this point so I stole the candle off of our advent wreath, the kids were jealous that dad got a really big candle for his birthday.

Happy birthday to the best husband and dad ever! We love you!

BYU Basketball Game

We had been talking about going to a BYU basketball game this season so when our stake president put on facebook he wasn't going to be using his tickets we jumped all over it.  His tickets were on the 7th row so it was really easy to keep the kids attention with what was going on.

We even brought Harvey which seemed rather ambitious.  It was so loud and bright that he was just fascinated with everything.  It wasn't until I took him out at half time that he realized he liked the quiet.  After that he wasn't thrilled about going back in.

Tad loved it.  I don't think he really paid attention to basketball but he knew where Cosmo was at all times.  At one point Cosmo walked right past us and didn't look at him, he was so sad that the nice lady behind us yelled, "Hey, Cosmo! You forgot to give this boy five right here!" Sure enough Cosmo came back and Tad thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Addie and Demzi both got into the game.  They would watch as the teams made baskets and keep track of the score to see who was winning.

BYU won it in the end and the kids had a blast! They had so much fun that we even took them to another game a couple of weeks later.

Live Nativity

My parents got us all tickets to the living nativity this year.  I hadn't ever been before but it was tons of fun. We parked at a church down the road then they shuttled us up in trailers.

We started around the fire where we were told the Christmas story as found in Luke 2.  After that we were able to walk through.

They had all the different animals you would have seen at the time.  My kids were loving being able to pet these.

Tad was obsessed with the camels and wanted me to lift him up so he could pet its nose.  Right as I did I was nuzzled in the face which Tad thought was hilarious.

After the animals we headed into the city part where they had booths of what you would have seen at the time.

The people were really good about staying in character and explained each thing.  I didn't get to hear most of them since Tad really just wanted to see the animals but we did see/hear how they made pottery and bread.

We didn't realize Kris's parents were coming up on the same night to go through with Heather but all my kids were excited to be able to go say hi to them.

After seeing the booths, we continued on, following the star until we came to the manger scene.  Tad kept asking, "Is that baby Jesus? I like Jesus."

After that we had some hot chocolate and then got back in their trailer to be shuttled off to our cars.

We ended the night at my parents' with hot chocolate at short bread.  My kids couldn't stop talking about how cool the nativity was and how they hoped we would do it again.  It was such a great way to start the Christmas season.