Christmas Holidays!

I'm back!! 

Ok I took about 1000 pictures (literally) over Christmas so I will have to pick and choose wisely here!

We went down south for 10 days to my sister Britt's in Cardston and then spent a few days in Taber. It was so much fun, I miss my sisters so much! I hate how far we all live from each other. We had a blast and did so much! I don't even know where to start. Let's start with the biggest announcement of Christmas.
Can you guess what it was??
A present showed up at the door to the family so my parents opened it, since it said open now, and in the bottom was a RING box! It said,

"I'm engaged! Love Steph!" 

To say I was shocked is putting it lightly!! After all i've never met this guy! But I hear he is awesome and they've been dating ever since she moved to Portland in the summer. His name is Kevin Bird and he is actually my sister Kristy's husband (Brandon), it's his cousin! So Kristy and Steph are going to have the same last name! What are the chances. Kristy did set them up though! After the idea set in I was super happy for her. That is all 3 of my sisters who got engaged to guys I never knew! I may be a bit of a protective sister...
So they are getting married in Portland on May 5th, and i'm the maid/matron of honor! I'm so beyond excited to help plan the wedding. I believe deep down I am an event planner so I love doing this stuff! I've actually thought of doing it as a career before, but probably wouldn't get far with that where I live. Maybe one day! Oh also, that will be all 4 of us married at the age of 18! CRA-ZY!
To tell my grandparents my dad came up with the idea to fool her thinking one of us announced we were pregnant. So we went to their house with pillows shoved under our coats and all 3 of us stood in their livingroom and we said, "guess who is pregnant?!" She guessed all three of us, ha. Then Steph said, "None of them! I'm engaged!" ha could you imagine if all of us were pregnant. No. Something always gets announced at our Christmas's. Last time Krist and Britt announced they were pregnant, and the time before that it was Kristy and ME who announced (with the twins). I guess when you have 4 girls someone is always pregnant or getting married at some point.

Opening the "gift"

The Bride! So weird.

Telling the grandparentals. Love this pic of us. If only I looked like that for real when i'm pregnant! Just a "bump" ha i'm not one of those lucky ones.

It was fun though and we are really excited for her! Congrats Steph and Kevin!

Onto Christmas stuff.

Christmas eve was fun. We spent it half at my grandparents and half at Britt's since the kids needed to go to bed and we were all staying there. Santa showed up to my grandparents house! It was the funnest thing, I cried because of how excited my girls were! They ran up to him and gave him a big hug! I was one of "those" moms. There is something about seeing the excitement in your children. He even brought them all little presents! It was great. 

Britt and Grandma had a pinata so we had one for the kids and one for the adults. Kyla smashed the snowman pinata in half! She is one strong kid! It was hilarious. Then the adult one we all took a turn but we were in a small living room so we had to go easy. Well then grandma gets the stick and swings and it slipped out of her hand and hit Presley in the face! ha. Grandma's turn was over. And we were worried about the guys!! So we came out of the pinata's with a broken decor bowl and an slightly injured twin. Not too bad.

We had our white elephant exchange, one for the kids and one for the adults and we also opened pjs! We did all the kids stuff at grandma's and the adult stuff at Britt's. We put out the reindeer food and I forgot to have the girls put out the milk and cookies! It's so much to remember! I felt sad so I did it myself for them because they were passed out by the time I remembered. My aunt and cousins also came out and it was so fun, it felt like we were kids again spending Christmas eve together. My dad also set up fireworks for all of us! It was awesome!

Here are all those things meshed into pics. I'm not organizing because this is taking long enough.

 you know it.

Cousins!!

Lets pause,

and take a look of the many excited faces of Christmas morning. Mostly Kyla. Which are the best thing i've seen in a long time...

enjoy.

 

So hilarious!

At least we know we are doing our job in making our kids happy! ha

Now onto Christmas morning and day.

Everyone got spoiled and we had tons of fun! It took us until noon to open presents. Then we had waffles for breakfast. Here we go...

Laken's smile here kills me.

That's just me changing Laken's diaper in the above photo, I just noticed that...

 

 Family Picture time!

 

We can't help it.

 

 

 

 Dustin loves the Goonies. So Steph got a picture of the Goonie rock since they live so close to it and developed it for him! He loved it!

We also celebrated Kristy's birthday which is Jan 4th but we always so something for her when we get together for Christmas! Happy Birthday to my gorgeous sister!!

 After Britt's we headed out to Taber for a few days. It was a lot more low key there but we got to take the kids out on their quad. Dustin was in heaven and our girls LOVED it. So it's a good thing the first thing we are buying after a house is a quad. Looks like Dustin got his "boys" after all. ;)
 

The weather was amazing the entire trip, all above zero! No snow! It didn't even feel like Christmas really. It was super windy in Taber but the last day it wasn't too bad so I was happy because I wanted to take some outdoor pics. I'm getting ansy not being able to do many photos outside. So I took my new lens out and took a few pics of the quadding. Nothing special but this lens is amazing! I love it. These are just fun, un-edited photos but I still love them. :)

 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

The girls checkin out Grandma's bus

And I think that's all folks. I did it. That sucked a little and only took me two days to do!

I hope everyone had an awesome Christmas holidays and i'm looking forward to this new year. We have a lot of new years goals. I don't like to call them resolutions because I'm always setting goals all year round, so I just count these in as those! My list is kind of long for this year though! I'm pretty sure we can do it. :)