Category: Family Fun

Christmas came and went a few weeks ago; maybe I should post a thing or two about it! It was nice to hang out here with Pace’s parents & brother, Cotton. This year was our year for establishing more of our own Christmas traditions. It was about time we decided what our traditions are, since Pace & I have been married for 7 years now!

We had a big, delicious Christmas Eve dinner:

We also watched The Nativity movie & Mr. Krueger’s Christmas, which makes me happy! Some other traditions we have for the Christmas season are: Going to see the temple lights, taking treats to our neighbors (Chase loves that one), watching The Grinch, and secretly taking a big box of gifts + food to someone we know who needs a little extra Christmas cheer & then driving around to see some Christmas lights. That is my favorite tradition!

We all got tons of gifts on the big day. One thing we do to help limit the presents is that each child gets 3 (because the Three Wise Men gave 3 gifts to baby Jesus). But then they get other gifts from relatives, too! Here Charlotte is enjoying the real makeup set that Uncle Cotton gave her. Isn’t Chase a great makeup artist?

On Christmas morning, all the adults were up before the kids were! There’s a first time for everything! We woke the kids up at 7:15 to open presents. We opened all the gifts & made it to our 9am church on time!! So early. But it was wonderful to have church on Christmas Day! I had put together one of the musical numbers for the program—4 of us women sang Mary’s Lullaby from the Children’s Songbook. It was fun to get up & sing! The whole program was simple & special. We came back & got our stockings & hung out the rest of the day.

One highlight of this Christmas was that Pace surprised us all (he’s always full of surprises!) by borrowing our neighbor’s trailer for his parents to sleep in when they stayed at our place on Christmas Eve. It was a pretty nice trailer! The next night, Gretchen, Chase, & Charlotte slept in there.

This picture makes me laugh! Pace feeding apple strings (from peeled apples) to Chase & Charlotte at the McGrandparents’ place!

They also love taking baths there in the fancy jetted tub (just like at the TGrandparents’ house).

So anyway, I LOVE having the Christmas tree & decorations up… But by the end of the month, I’m over it. All the clutter must be put away, ASAP!! I actually started taking things down on Christmas night after the kids had gone to bed. Bah humbug! On Dec. 26th, Chase & Charlotte were saddened by the news & tried to protect the tree so it wouldn’t get put away. It didn’t work!

There’s kind of a sad feeling in the air when Christmas is over & all the excitement of the season is done, but at the same time, it’s always a relief to get back to normal life & back to the regular basic home décor, too. Like when you go on a trip—It’s always nice to leave, but then it’s always nice to come back home, too!

This has been an exciting time of year! Our only Christmas party was our church party at the very beginning of the month, we got our shopping done early, we didn’t do Christmas cards, and we’re not traveling, so it’s been a very chill time for us.

One thing we’ve been up to is this: We’ve been eating tons of sugar. TONS. Especially Yours Truly. I think we’ve had a record number of treats from neighbors this year, and most have been brought over within the last week… So you’d think that we wouldn’t be baking any sweets. But of course, we love to make treats! We made lots of decorated sugar cookies to hand out to the neighbors. And here’s Chase, making some delicious No-Bake Cookies. He did it all himself and I just told him what to do! And then I ate most of them afterwards!

The picture below is NOT very cute, but it’s one I took recently of all three kids together! I love them. All three have blue eyes. How did this happen? “McCulloch Blue is dominant,” as Granddaddy would say!

We got together recently with Becky & her kids, plus her nephew. Between the two of us, we had 8 kids running around at the Del Taco play place. Awesome! We always get together around our birthdays in December (the rest of our December birthday roommate group has moved away). The original plan this time was to grab some lunch, then take all the kids to a jumpy place, but this play place was fun & FREE so we ditched the first idea & bribed our kids with treats.

I love Becky. She was in my church stake back home & we’ve been friends ever since we met when we were 12. She is just a wonderful, talented friend & mom and I like to hang out with her not only because she’s fun, but also in hopes that some of her awesomeness will perhaps rub off on me!! (Photo courtesy of Chase)

My birthday was great! Pace took the day off work, which made all the difference. Among other things, we went ice skating in the morning as a family while GG held Caroline. Pace is just so hot when he speed skates with ease and does some of his old hockey tricks, like the hockey stop. I just love it! As for Chase, he is doing really well at ice skating & is almost ready for hockey! He practiced with us wearing hockey skates, which were more slippery, but he did just fine.

This is my cousin Leann & two of her three girls. Her oldest is 9! She just had twins as a surrogate mother. Surrogacy is a controversial topic, but I was so amazed by her decision to help a couple have their very own children, when they couldn’t do it on their own.

We visited Leann in the hospital when she had the twins a few weeks ago, & I choked back tears to meet the couple and to see them showing off their twins (girl & boy who were 5 & 6 pounds. Healthy & adorable)!

We haven’t had much snow at all around here so far. But when we do, here is what our front walkway generally looks like. Sometimes I make them clean it up, & sometimes I just do it myself. And when I walk over to put things away, my socks get wet from the snow that has been tracked in the house. Someday I’ll miss this!

Random photo. I just love reading books with my kids! I get this from my mother. Kids’ books are a lot of fun and I can actually focus through the whole book, unlike adult books! They love that book that Chase is holding, Tikki Tikki Tembo. Weird book. But they love to shout Tikki’s entire name as I read it: “Tikki Tikki Tembo No Sa Rembo Chari Bari Ruchi Pip Peri Pembo!!!” Good times.

And a funny picture below from a while ago. Just had to post it!

For the Thanksgiving Break, we visited our good friends Bracken & Katie Abrams, who were visiting family in Idaho. It was wonderful to see them. We really, REALLY miss them now that they live all the way over in Arkansas! We had Thanksgiving Dinner at Katie’s grandparents’ cabin out in the middle of nowhere.

Bracken & Katie with (our) baby Caroline.

The highlight of Charlotte’s life! Getting Glitter Toes!!!

The Camo Buddies. They got the matching hats at an Army Surplus store there in Idaho.

They went out on a Man Date to The Museum of Idaho, which had a World War II exhibit going on.

As a family, we went exploring in Idaho Falls. Not too much to explore, but we enjoyed ourselves! Our kids like to open their mouths wide for photos for some reason. Can’t get a serious picture!

Idaho Falls Temple

We stumbled upon a real World War II cannon!

Last night, we went to Temple Square in Salt Lake City to see the Christmas lights. We loved it!

We got there a little before 5pm, which was nice because it was just getting dark, & we also found free parking on the street. Then all the lights came on as we were unloading from our car. Perfect!

I loved that there was NO snow! Almost December and we’ve only had like 3 snow days! Yessss! Keep up the good work, Utah.

The Salt Lake Temple took 40 years to build (most temples take more like 2-3 years to build). Lots of hard work & sacrifice went into this beautiful building.

Baby Caroline was present as well, but she was all cozy in the stroller, so I opted not to disturb her just to snap a photo.

Chase liked leaning back & pretending he was falling in the water. My photos of that were all blurry, so I won’t post them! We were glad he didn’t actually fall in.

Charlotte loved this Christmas tree in the Visitors’ Center. It had shiny pastel ornaments, including her favorite colors which, of course, are pink & purple.

We also saw the Nativity outside & listened to the story from Luke 2, we saw the beautiful Christus statue in the North Visitors’ Center, we looked at some paintings depicting some Old Testament prophets, and we heard a high school choir perform some Christmas carols. It was a great evening!

I busted out the ghillie suit again this year and gave a scare to anyone who was willing to come near our house. Somehow, none of the kids expected it with a guy filming them. Here are a few of my favorites, thanks for filming Grandaddy!

Halloween is my favorite holiday. Pace thinks that is weird. What can I say? I’m a Terribilini girl, therefore I LOVE candy! And I love everything else about Halloween, too.

The photo above is from last Saturday. We invited the Fears to go with us to Central Utah Gardens for some free family fun. We dressed up in costumes not only to be festive, but also to get free Krispy Kreme donuts like last year… But the donuts this year were not Krispy Kremes after all. AND I spent all but 5 minutes feeding & changing Caroline in the car & taking Charlotte to the bathroom. Oh, well. This is my time & season for taking care of children!

Chase wanted to carve pumpkins. I agreed, but made him do most of the dirty work (for which he insisted on wearing rubber gloves). Charlotte’s face says it all!

After a few minutes of using an awkwardly huge, sharp knife, I borrowed one of those carving kits from my neighbor, Emily. In the past I’d figured that those kits were a waste of money, but it made the carving sooo much easier, and it was fun to do a cool design on the pumpkin. Next year, we’ll be buying a carving kit!

On the big night, Pace wore his authentic military sniper Ghillie suit. (When he has the whole thing on, he just looks like a big bush.) He hid in our yard and scared people who came trick-or-treating at our place. People loved it (after the initial shock), and some even remembered that he’d hidden & scared people year before last also! It was SOOOO entertaining. I hope he posts some of the funny videos that Jim caught on camera.

One unsuspecting pre-teen kid used Pace as a step-stool to get up to our porch! He was startled when he realized that the “pile of grass” was a person! When he & his friends were leaving our house, his fellow pre-teen friend apologized, “Sorry, Grass Pile.”

I was surprised by how many big kids & teens went out trick-or-treating. I remember one Halloween when I was about 13, my best friend Jamie & were bored & really wanted some candy. So we put a big sheet over us and went out trick-or-treating as ghosts. Whenever we’d knock on the door, we’d duck down so we’d look shorter (Jamie didn’t need to duck too much). When people would answer the door, we’d exclaim, “Trick or treat!’” using our best high, youthful voices. Most of the time, people were annoyed and disgusted that such OLD kids would go around trick-or-treating. Some people were even angry about it. Lame. But around here, it’s the norm for older kids to go out on Halloween! Go figure.

Caroline sporting the hot pink onesie that Amber gave us! It says “Wickedly Cute.” Perfect for Halloween!

Charlotte was a dainty ballerina. She knew all year that she wanted to be a ballerina because in the Berenstain Bears Trick-or-Treat book, Sister Bear is a ballerina for Halloween. The great thing is, if she decides to take ballet lessons, she can wear this same leotard!

Yes Chase and I want this for Christmas.