Christmas Eve and other Pre-Christmas Festivities

Cute Christmas outfits!

Lea and Jonah are happy kids so excited for all of the Christmas festivities. They are best friends and they love playing together.

My little cowgirl!

Jonah's 4th birthday was December 23rd. Happy Birthday Jonah!

I prepared homemade cinnamon rolls on Christmas Eve so they would be ready to stick in the oven first thing Christmas morning - making the house smell irresistibly good while we open our Christmas presents. Yum! Thanks Sonja for the super cute apron.

Below are pictures of the Christmas Eve party we have every year with my extended family at my mom's house!

James and Cheryl - cousins :)

Tyler and Aleena - cousins :)

Grandma Urrutia passing out See's candy for Christmas gifts to everyone!

Aleena and Cheryl - sisters :)

Carly, Baby Nahlia, Mark & Angie (newlyweds) and Erin - more cousins :)

Angela and Aleena - two pregnant bellies :)

Jonah biting Santa's chocolate head off...mmm!
Yummy Christmas Eve!

Oh how I love Christmastime!

A very kind friend of the family dressed up as Santa this year and surprised Lea and Jonah with an early visit. They were so excited! Lea kept asking me if this was the real Santa. I told them that Santa must have know we were missing Grandpa this year so he chose Lea and Jonah extra special to visit them. This made sense to them and they thoroughly enjoyed having him come.

And of course they loved getting a present!

December 15th was my dad's birthday. He would have been 53 years old. It's so weird to think he will never be 53 or 54 ect. It was an emotional day for me. I miss him a lot. My mom and Dan and the kids and I went to Red Robin (my dad's favorite place to eat) to celebrate and think of him. My sister and brother in Provo, went to Red Robin there that night too.

This is a picture of the fabulously fun gingerbread house that lea and Jonah made with their Grandma!

Boyer Family Christmas Carolers

Friday night our family held the tradition started by the Leighton family when Aleena was a little girl of caroling and bringing goodies to our neighbors. It was a lot of fun and the neighbors appreciated it. It was a good way to get to know our new neighbors better. We kept it simple and just sang Jingle Bells. For the occasion we made jingle bell necklaces for the kids to jingle during the song! It was fun!

Here's one of the plates of goodies we made for our neighbors!

Lea holding one of our cats!

Here are the kids with their jingle bell necklaces. Cuties!

WE LOVE CHRISTMASTIME!!!

Trimming the Tree and Decorating for Christmas

Here is our Nativity Scene and below is another one of my favorite decorations.

Thursday December 11th we got our Christmas Tree!!!

Stan and Roxanna (Dan's awesome parents) gave us a train this year to put around our tree! We love it!

Marshmallow Snowmen

Well, we don't have snow in California so we make our snowmen out of marshmallows! Last week preschool was at my house and this was a fun activity we did.

So cute! I could only take a picture of the girls with their snowmen because the boys ate theirs too fast.

This is what Jonah's looked like minutes after making his snowmen. He devoured those marshmallows!

Seattle!

December 4-6 my mom and I went to Seattle to visit my brother Steven who lives there. Thursday night we went to see his band play at a bar called Blue Moon. Steven is the drummer. And the music was good! Yes this was my first time in a bar. Me, the pregnant lady, my mother, and my friend Anya - all Mormons - went to a bar for the first time and ordered 7-Up's and shirley temple's. It was an interesting experience, but my brother's band "Glory Dog" was good and the three other band members were very nice. We had fun watching Steven in action!

Me and Anya - isn't she gorgeous!?! Anya and I met our freshman year in college. We were roommates at BYU and quickly became best of friends and roomed together for three total years. She lives in Seattle too, so we were able to visit with her also. It was so fun to see her again!

Steven on the drums!

It was dark, so it was hard to take good pictures of the band, but here is one that you can actually see.

Friday Steven had the day off of work and we went to see him in his apartment. He had to play the drums for us again. He loves the drums. :)

That evening we went to the Space Needle. It was such an awesome experience. We loved it!

This was the amazing view from the top of the Space Needle. We timed it perfectly going at sunset! It was breathtakingly awesome! These pictures do not do it justice.

We were very lucky that it didn't rain the whole time we were in Seattle. Everyone thanked us for bringing the sunny weather from California with us!

We dined at the 5-star "Sky City" Restaurant at the top of the Space Needle. It revolves around giving us a wonderful view of Seattle while we leisurely enjoyed a delicious meal with a wonderful atmosphere. At $50 a plate we better have enjoyed it, right?

On Saturday we met up with Anya again before flying home and visited the Seattle Temple. It was beautiful. We had lunch with Anya too and had a great time with her.

Here is the nativity scene on the temple grounds. Our trip to Seattle was so much fun! My mom and I had a wonderful time visiting Steven and Anya!

Lea's Cast

I just wanted to document some pictures of Lea in her cast since she got it off today. Lea chose green, because she wanted a new color for her collection. She already had pink and red. The picture above is with my cousins son Micah after his baptism. The one below was taken on Thanksgiving. What a beautiful and wonderful daughter I have!