Beautiful Christmas Bride

My cousin Derek got sealed to his sweetheart on December 26th. It was an evening sealing and the Spirit was very strong there, we really enjoyed attending & are certain Derek made the best choice!
Kristen is a sweet girl, a gorgeous bride and a lot of fun, we're so excited to welcome her into our family!
The reception was held the next night. Here's a photo of all the cousins, siblings and spouses/fiancees, aka 'the important people' (except Joleen, Sawyer, Ashley & Carly):
Alec was his usual wriggly self and enjoyed being chased by his daddy down the hallways most of the reception...
except when they asked all single men to try and catch the garter. I love this shot, Alec ran right out with the other guys!

...12 Days of...7 days of...morning of...Christmas!

This year Paul & I decided to do the '12 Days of Christmas' to a family of 8, with the aid of my sister Kelsey. We used some of our Christmas budgets on that instead of each other. It was SO fun!! The children were trying to catch us, so it made drop-offs very exciting. I got a picture of Kelsey on Christmas Eve, preparing for the trip:
This year Alec found some gifts from Paul's family and tore into one before I could stop him, but we really liked the idea of spreading out the fun, so we started the '7 Nights of Christmas', letting him open a gift each night. Here he is Christmas Eve enjoying his latest 'choo choo' and his Christmas Eve PJ's from Nana:My Uncle takes great pleasure in finding the noisiest things possible for Alec, so this Christmas (Eve) he got a loud book:The highlight of Christmas morning was Alec's 'ride on' Thomas from his Granny and Grandad who bought it for him when they were over visiting back in October:

It was so fun this year. Christmas is definitely better with children!
In the evening we went to my brother, Christopher's for dinner and some games.Afterwards, Paul and I got to go see a movie. I'd been pretty excited for Marley & Me and was not disappointed. I cried through a lot of the movie, but it was great! I highly recommend it, but bring a tissue. Paul's very picky about movies and he liked it too (this is the 4th film I saw at the cinema this year, we only go if we really want to see it these days).

Disneyland

Although the snow delayed us a day, we finally made it Thursday to Anaheim. We arrived about 7pm (they didn't open the 15 until after noon!), and just in time for a swim with Uncle Nick (Paul's younger brother). Alec's cousin Michael is about a month older, so we were very excited to spend time with them and watch Alec and Mikey interact.Friday morning, walking into the park, we asked Alec & Mikey to hold hands and it was so adorable!!

We 'hopped' over to CA Adventure for the afternoon with Kelsey & John to do a few rides there.Although he refused to keep the glasses on during the ride (Toy Story), he was willing to pose for a picture with them:Alec started to scream during Bug's Life, so he and I left early...guess CA Adventure doesn't have much for toddlers!Saturday morning my family came to the park, so we were able to do a few family rides with them before nap time:Alec and Mikey were huge fans of the animal characters (Alec cried when we tried to introduce him to Buzz Lightyear), so waiting in line to meet Pooh and Eeyore was worth it:
Nick & Mikey, Morgan & Heather:
Cousin Mikey with Eeyore:
Alec happily fingering his '1st Visit' button:
Our final morning we stayed about 2 hours, just re-visiting the train rides, Small World, carousel and Peter Pan:
Alec loved Small World, so we had to go again:
Exhausted at the end of the trip is always a good sign:

Snow in the Desert...

So, this morning we left for Anaheim and Disneyland, but the road signs out of Vegas informed us that the 15 would be closed at Primm (about 45 miles out of Vegas) until 2pm. We decided to check out the outlet mall and wait until the interstate opened again.
It was good to let Alec run around for a while and he loved carrying bags for us!

We head out around 1.40 and get stuck in the 'Whiskey Pete' casino parking lot...for an hour and a half! Paul got out and made a snowman on the hood of the car to amuse Alec. What a great daddy!
Eventually a security guard informs us they may not open the 15 southbound today & we are forced back north to Vegas...we reach home at 5...it had been a LONG day! So, hopefully the drive tomorrow goes better when they get the snowplows on the road.

Luckily the agency we did our travel plans through is amazing and moved our booking back a day so we won't lose money or a night! Hooray for Get Away Today!

Another point for the 'Nature' argument...

Hilary invited Alec & I to join her & Catherine in making some Christmas crafts this morning. Alec is not the least bit interested in crafts & I struggle to get him to color pictures (no future Rembrandt in our household), but we always have fun with the Muckleroys, so we decided to go.

Alec & Catherine are polar opposites, each perfect representations of their gender. Today's example is: she likes things neat, he likes them messy. When we started allowing the children to pick out decorations to make trees, Alec was more interested in dumping the bowl on the table...4 times. Each time, Catherine would glower at him, then painstakingly pick them all up and put them back into the bowl.
Then, Hilary brought out the paint and a sense of foreboding filled me. At first, it was cute, he would put his hand in the paint and mix all the colors, Cat was clearly getting frustrated:
But, that wasn't enough, he decided it would be fun to paint things other than the ornaments:

I would have been worried about the damage, but Hilary's the one asking him to say 'cheese' while she takes pictures of it & it was child-friendly, so it all wiped off!

I love Cat's face in this one, it's almost as if she's thinking, "Now, how am I going to clean this all up??"
I'm still up for an arranged marriage though, I think they compliment each other well and they're both so cute!

More Cute Pictures!

Alec, smiling for me in his new Christmas outfit:

Alec was getting a bit fussy during 'Black Friday' shopping, but luckily they had a little train he could ride on:Thanksgiving morning:
Enjoying the fall leaves:
The little monkey loves climbing on anything and everything-his current favorite is to simply climb up on chairs and sit like an adult:

He also enjoys putting on any shoes he finds & trying to walk around in them. Here he's trying on my flip-flops:

Haircuts are more fun if Uncle Christopher gets one too:

He also loves blowing out candles, so on Paul's birthday, we had to re-light the candles several times: