Our Holidays

We had a great Christmas and were able to spend some wonderful time with our families in Southern Idaho. What made it even better was that the girls were almost angels all the way there and all the way home. Summer and Claire did a great job for the 8+ hours it took (one way).

We first had our Christmas with Grandpa Barney and Lori.

I was definitely here supervising this.


Then we had our Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa Searle's.
Lance tried reading Luke 2 overtop the crying kids, the hee-hawing donkey, and the adults giving commands to the children. The picture in no way portrays the chaos. Luke 2 lasted about one minute--it was the condensed version.
The grandkids on Grandma's piano: Claire, Summer, Mabree Searle, and Noah Nelson (not pictured: Brecken Searle, Anniston Searle, and Graham Blatter). We sure missed Graham!
And then we celebrated the holiday at Grandma and Grandpa Kartchner's.Claire sporting her new slippers (and pigtails!).We sure missed Andrew and Maria, but it was fun spending time with Blake and Sable. One of Summer's funniest moments was right in the middle of singing, "Two Little Blackbirds" for everyone, when, from a small glimpse in the corner of her eye, she spotted a picture of Sable, and excitedly ran over to the picture yelling, "Sable! It's you Sable! Sable! Look! It's you!" Everyone laughed pretty hard.

Sable opening Rhett's awesome home-made gift to her:


We ended our trip by heading up to my parent's cabin for a day--which actually ended up being a few more days because we got snowed in.

For Christmas, Noah got a Mickey Mouse club video with four episodes. At the end of each episode, Mickey Mouse and his gang sing the "Hot Dog" song. This song was the cue to bust the moves. As you can see, it wasn't just the grandkids that loved this song.
Summer got to play in the snow for her first real time ever. She got some snow pants from Grandma Kartchner, and where better to put it to use than Island Park? She got to go sledding on the the snow machine, and then got pulled behind in the sled. She loved it.

Summer catching snowflakes on her tongue.
Claire's pretty eyes:
Thanks everyone for making our visit so comfortable and enjoyable. We made great memories this year, and look forward to the coming years with just as many presents memories!