Christmas time is here...

Christmas time is here...have yourself some cheer!  We've been doing just that around the Ryerse household!  (:  We love it! 

Here is a pic of Emma and Lucy by our Christmas tree, with their new monkeys that our good and talented friend Peperli made for them.  Are they not the cutest things ever?





Callahan also loved his monkey, but wouldn't get in the shot with the girls.  He snuggles and hugs and loves it!  They are so cute, thanks Peper!

We went downtown to see some of the sights with a couple of friends.  We went to the mall...perfect photo op for the kids.  They especially loved playing in the real sand!

They had a ginormous Christmas tree there, it was magnificent!  I'm glad I didn't have to decorate and string the lights on that tree...

We went to the Davenport hotel to see their gingerbread house displays.  It was awesome!  The theme was travel and everything was edible (the kids wished they could try some).

Bigfoot - that was Cal's favorite part.  It was on the back of a mountain camping gingerbread house. 

This Yellowstone one was great! 

This was another Yellowstone one.  It must be a favorite vacation destination. 

Merry Christmas to you!

Emma had a Kindergarten "Holiday" concert.  They sang (or yelled, depending on the child) a lot of fun songs and were all so adorable! 

Getting ready to sing!  She told me that she tried hard not to smile at Daddy looking at her.  Her favorite song was a song called "Snowpants".

Our neighbors invited us to a Live Nativity that we went to.  It was so great!  We had to wait in our car for almost an hour until we got there, but it was worth it.  We stayed in our car the whole time and they gave us a CD with music and narration about the Christmas story, and candy canes and hot chocolate to snack on in the car while we waited.  They had live animals like sheep, oxen, mules, and camels even!  Wow!  The best part was taking some time out to remember what Christmas is really about.  I'm so very grateful for the Christ child whose birth we celebrate this time of year! This is the wise men. 

Here's the baby Jesus with Mary and Joseph.  It was a still, beautiful moment. 

Bethlehem was neat.  They had a huge market set up.  We also loved the angels scene, but that picture didn't turn out well at all. 

Dave driving and drinking hot chocolate.

Lucy and Mom waiting in the car.

 Emma and Cal nice and cozy in the back.  It was nice that we didn't have to get out of our car the whole time.  They liked seeing the Christmas story come to life. 

We gave little treats to some neighbors, the missionaries an investigator, and some friends.  These ones said "Jesus is the 'Reisen' for all season!"

We had a baking day and made a huge mess in the kitchen!  We made cashew brittle, peanut butter cream balls, peanut butter bark, peppermint bark, fudge, and chocolate covered pretzels.  Mmmm....

Emma loved the cashew brittle especially and said "I just can't stop eating it!"  She had a fun time breaking it apart. 

We usually like to make a homeade gingerbread house, but I was feeling a little stressed and decided to just buy one from the store.  We got home, and the house was all cracked.  I tried to repair it, but to no avail.  So I just let the kids go to town with the frosting and candy.  This is the result.  Emma called it the "Crappy House".  Ha!  Cal just loved eating the candy!

Gingerbread Fail. 

We had a party with a few of our friends.  Spencer, Abby, Lilly, Emma, Cal and Cruz.  The kids had little crafts, we had soup for dinner, and the kids played while the adults played games, did a white elephant gift exchange and talked.  This was the only picture I took.  I guess we were having too much fun playing!

We also had a great ward Christmas party.  We had dinner (ham, creamy potatoes, ceasar salad, and rolls with cheesecake and cake), then a program (I played "Still, Still, Still" on my flute and Emma sang with the Primary choir.  Then we had a special visitor: who else but the big man himself!  Emma was excited, she loves Santa now, but Cal wasn't so sure and said before he actually got on his lap "I don't like him!"  Lucy thought the beard was pretty cool!

 

I love this shot of Santa and Lucy!  Yes, Santa, Lucy's been a good girl this year! 

 Cal and Kyle!

Em and Morgan!

The Primary Choir singing. 

I'm so happy to celebrate Christmas and participate in all of the fun and traditions.  I love Christmas and I love Jesus, who is the reason for this and all seasons!

Grateful. So. Very. Grateful.

Thanksgiving, what a great holiday!  I seem to enjoy it more the older I get.  I used to be gun-ho and ready for Christmas the day after Halloween, but now I'm resisting that urge and taking one holiday at a time.  We had a great time celebrating Thanksgiving, by decorating the house for it, reading Thanksgiving books a lot, doing FHE's on gratitute and the story of the pilgrims and Thanksgiving, playing the gratitude game and more. 

On Thanksgiving Day, we woke up and watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, made regular rolls and orange rolls, and headed out to my Uncle and Aunt's for the Thanksgiving Feast.  We had a yummy meal, and talked, watched a movie (kids) and football (the dads), and played together. It was a nice day!  I forgot my camera!  So I took some photos with my camera.    

We also made Thanksgiving cards to send to loved ones.  We used paper plates to make pumpkin pie, Emma painted them.  We put a cotton ball on for the whipped cream and even sprinkled pumpkin pie spice on it to make it a scented card. 

The kids talking about Thanksgiving.  Happy Thanksgiving!

President Henry B. Eyring: "Our Father in Heaven commands us to be thankful in all things, and He requires that we give thanks for the blessings we receive. We know that all of His commandments are intended to make us happy, and we also know that to break commandments leads to misery.

So to be happy and to avoid misery, we must have a grateful heart. We have seen in our lives the connection between gratitude and happiness. All of us would like to feel gratitude, yet it is not easy to be consistently grateful in all things in the trials of life. Sickness, disappointment, and the loss of people we love come at times in our lives. Our sorrows can make it hard to see our blessings and to appreciate the blessings God has in store for us in the future.

It is a challenge to count our blessings because we have a tendency to take good things for granted. When we lose a roof over our heads, food to eat, or the warmth of friends and family, we realize how grateful we should have been when we had them.

Most of all, sometimes it is hard for us to be sufficiently grateful for the greatest gifts we receive: the birth of Jesus Christ, His Atonement, the promise of resurrection, the opportunity to enjoy eternal life with our families, the Restoration of the gospel with the priesthood and its keys. Only with the help of the Holy Ghost can we begin to feel what those blessings mean for us and for those we love. And only then can we hope to be thankful in all things and avoid the offense to God of ingratitude.

We must ask in prayer that God, by the power of the Holy Ghost, will help us see our blessings clearly even in the midst of our trials. He can help us by the power of the Spirit to recognize and be grateful for blessings we take for granted."

I've been trying harder to see some of those blessing I often overlook that are not so obvious (family, religion, the atonement, a home, food, etc.), and ask to see all of the blessings, even little ones in my life.  As a family, we did this exercise, and each of us named one in each category.  It was fun to hear what everyone had to say, from trucks, pizza, kitties, and air conditioning to temples and eternal families.

Try it yourself, and you will see that there are so many things to be grateful for!  (:

"Gratitude Challenge

Let’s not just talk about counting our blessings—let’s do it! Write a list of 100 things you are thankful for. If that sounds like it is too many, try this:

Write 10 physical abilities you are grateful for.

1. Write 10 material possessions you are grateful for.
2. Write 10 living people you are grateful for.
3. Write 10 deceased people you are grateful for.
4. Write 10 things about nature you are grateful for.
5. Write 10 things about today you are grateful for.
6. Write 10 places on earth you are grateful for.
7. Write 10 modern inventions you are grateful for.
8. Write 10 foods you are grateful for.
9. Write 10 things about the gospel you are grateful for.

When we make a list like this, we discover that a list of 100 doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of all the things God has given us."

Cal's Dynamite 3rd Birthday!

Flippin' sweet...Cal is 3!  We celebrated Cal's birthday a few weeks ago, his real birthday is November 28, but we had a party for him a few days early!  For his birthday party, he asked to have a Napoleon Dynamite birthday.  Yep, it's pretty much the best movie ever to him.  Most movie's Cal won't sit through, but he loves Napoleon and is just entranced when he watches it.  I had to convince Emma and Cal to watch it and I didn't think they'd like it, but they sit and giggle and get a kick out of it.  (I do, too!)  We dressed him up like the star of the show.  No Napoleon is complete without crazy hair, oversized wire frames, a Vote for Pedro shirt, tight jeans and some moon boots.  We put this little number together quickly.  He looked so cute and thought it was pretty cool he got to be like Napoleon for the day!  Yesssssss!  We also decorated like the dance scene with streamers all over the ceiling.

Emma wanted to be Deb, so we put on a pink shirt and pulled her hair into a side ponytail, and she

was good to go!

GOSH!  Cal has been into quoting Napoleon lately, he likes saying "gosh" and "idiots" (the latter we're trying to convince him that's not a good one to say).  

We based his party off the movie.  We started the movie, and would do activities when they came up.  That was a nice way to break things up, perfect for Cal!

Watching the movie and eating Kip's chips.

Our first thing we did was lunch!  After the scene in the cafeteria for the first time, we paused the movie and ate some food.  "Tina, you fat lard, go eat your dinner!"  

We had "Get your own tots" and "flippin' sweet corndogs".

Preston High veggies

Dang Quesda-dillas

Deb's 1% milk & Idaho farmer's protein drink

Kip's chips

The kids in the dining room-transformed into the cafeteria.  Cal just wanted to invite his 2nd cousins, Morgan and Kyle.  So those were the party guests.  They're always so much fun and such cute kids!

Present time - Cal was so excited and had so much fun with all of the presents he got!  Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa, he loves what he picked out from you, the Boomer's Flippin' Fire Rescue and the Thomas bouncy ball. 

Enjoying his presents.  He kept saying "that's pretty coo" about his presents!

This is the cake I threw together.  It was a fun and pretty easy one to make.

 Cake, yum!  Cal wanted strawberry cake, and picked out some ice-creams.  We ate the cake when Pedro got his Felicitones cake. 

 Glamour shots by Deb Mom. 

Kyle holds Lucy.   

They also got goody bags, and would get a little something to put in it when a related event would happen in the show.  They got chapstick for "my lips hurt real bad!", pencils for when Napoleon was drawing a liger, bubble gum when Summer was popping some bubbles, and dum dums when he said "you guys are dumb!". 

We did an Uncle Rico's football toss outside. 

We used our tire swing in the backyard and the kiddos tried to throw the football through it.  "How much you wanna bet I can throw this football over that mountain?"

The kids paired up and drew each other.  Their pictures were really cute.  Luckily, they didn't spend three hours shading upper-lips.  (:

We also attempted to make boondoggle (spelling?) keychains.  Doesn't that just take you back?  Lucy had a fun time playing in it.  It was a fun party, and Cal had a memorable birthday! 

Cal loves doing the dance from the movie.  That's how we ended things off, with him dancing!  He wanted to do it "all by meself", so that's what he did.  Then the girls wanted to do it.  He's got some pretty sweet moves, I have to admit!  For some reason, the video doesn't want to load.  I'll post it on FB or something.

Cal's real birthday was on Monday.  We had a fun day reading together, playing with his new birthday toys, talking about when he was born, made messes, and we had pizza for dinner and watched a new movie he got for his birthday.  He's getting so big, and is such a cute, busy boy!  We love him so much!  He is always saying and doing the cutest (and sometimes most frustrating) things.  He's a keeper for sure!  Hope all of your wildest dreams come true, little buddy!

HAPPY 3rd BIRTHDAY CALLAHAN!