Tis the Season

The holiday season is in full swing in the Bradley house and we are keeping both our UPS driver and Target cashier very busy! The kids also seem to have extra things going on at school adding to the already crazy month. Here are a few things that we have managed to get in during the first two weeks of the month:

Decorating

The kids were super excited to get the Christmas decorations up this  year. Abby seems to really enjoy them and I have to play clean up a couple time a day to put back together the Fisher Price Nativity and put a few decorations back on the tree. It is fun though and the kids had a great time doing all the decorating. 

Christkindlmart

Laine was asked to participate in this festival this year. It is a German Festival and we had fun walking around and seeing all the fun crafts and booths, hearing the accordion music, and sampling some of the treats.  The boys had fun finding answers to the scavenger hunt and we had a great night learning about another culture. 

It was really cold that day so we all bundled up. 

Laine as a snow angel

Eve with Krampus

Bradley family party

Christian's extended family gets together every year to celebrate Christmas together. This year we celebrated at the Classic Fun Center. We spent the morning with our family enjoying good food, good company and some roller skating. 

Matt and Christian helping each other skate. 

Cousin time!

Zoo Lights!

We love attending Zoo Lights each year. It was another very cold evening but having learned our lesson from a couple days earlier we bundled up even more. The zoo was just about empty and we had a fun time walking around and seeing the light displays and even getting to sere a few of the animals. 

The line for Santa was non-existent so we jumped in.
Matt was pretty happy about that. 

The light tunnel. I think my kids could spend
the entire time we are at the zoo on this bit. 

Ward Christmas Party

I tried having Abby sit with Santa when we went to the zoo and she freaked out. I was surprised because Santa is one of the words that she knows and she is quick to point him out on TV, in books, or in pictures. We tried again and the picture above was the result. She was traumatized and clung to me for about 15 mins after, she did however like the stick candy he gave her. 

Regular tasks

Okay I just included this picture because I thought it was cute.

Hope your holiday is fabulous! 

December Fun

This post is late in posting, I meant many times to put this up in December...yeah we were just having too much fun to do that. December is always a busy animal and here is just a glimpse of what we did over the holiday month:

CRAFTING

We did a lot of crafting in December. In fact Eve went to town with her 100 rolls of washi tape.  Matt did quite a bit of it in preschool. He was enamored of his gingerbread house and was upset at the end of the month when it was time to go the great gingerbread house in the sky. 

ZOO LIGHTS! 

This is one of our favorite traditions and we were lucky to go at the start of the month before it was too busy and too cold. 

Um, James has gone missing....it's like Where's Waldo here. 

The kids were so happy to have Grammy and Poppa with them this year....and to walk down the light tunnel. 

It was Star Wars Night! Matt was so happy to get to see Darth Vader

BRADLEY FAMILY PARTY

We love this party with Christian's extended family every year. This year it was at a roller rink. The kids had fun skating and I had fun visiting. 

Abby and Grandma matched that day. 

Christian was a good sport and helped Matt out skating for the first time. 

CHRISTMAS EVE

After a week of playing with our cousins, going to the trampoline park, ice skating, and sledding it was time for Christmas Eve at Grandma and Grandpa Bradley's- complete with tamales and the nativity. 

The Angel chorus

Little Shepherd boys. James was their sheep but wouldn't hold still long enough for a picture

The kids came home to the traditional PJ gift and picture. I was super excited that I found matching PJs this year, it is hard than you would think when you have to get everything from a 13 year old down to 6 months. 

CHRISTMAS

Christmas morning got off to a rocky start. I had been up with a vomiting baby at 3 am and then the dog and Matt decided that they too needed to throw up. Once that was all taken care of and everyone seemed okay we got to have fun seeing the packages under the tree. 

The kids all got blankets this year and had fun wrapping up in them right away

Abby seemed happy with her new seat and playing with the super cool paper. The other kids seemed to have fun helping her open her gifts. 

We spent Christmas afternoon at Grammy and Poppa's house. Abby was happy about that...so were the rest of us. 

NEW YEAR'S EVE

We had a fun week between Christmas and New Year's being together. Christian took the week off of work and we took the kids to Star Wars and they enjoyed playing Disney Infinity all week long. We also played plenty of board games.  On New Year's Eve we had the traditional Bradley dinner of fondue...Christian even did a chocolate one this year, 

Sticks to poke bread...sounds like a great idea. 

After playing some games we came downstairs to watch Doctor Who and Super Girl, we told the kids they could stay up as late as they wanted, Matt made it till 11:58. The rest of us toasted the New Year together and then all wandered to our beds. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERY ONE! 

It's a Girl

Christian here, posting for Natalie. Sincere apologies for the many months without a post. We've been pretty busy at the Bradley home. I probably ought to get the big news out of the way first up, we're pregnant, and it's a girl.

For those who haven't spent much time with us lately, Natalie has managed to be pregnant for 12 of the last 17 months (two back to back miscarriages, those sucked), and we still have three months to go. Natalie has magic pregnancy powers that make it morning all day long, and by that I mean that morning sickness is active around the clock. We had some real fun for a couple of months when she had to go on a daily IV drip to keep from dying of dehydration, just glad we were able to do it with the home hospice care service or we would have basically been living at the hospital. Baby Bellatrix as we've been calling her (no, that's not what we're naming her) has been about as much trouble as Matthew was in utero, but at least this one made it past the end of the first trimester so we're all pretty happy about it. We're due in July

That's probably enough baby stuff, what else has been going on around here? Lots.

Seeing the Christmas lights at the zoo.

Meeting stormtroopers at Comic-con.

Singing.

Cooking.

Snuggling cousins.

Growing mustaches.

Playing fetch.

Seeing American landmarks done in Legos.

Playing basketball.

Gardening.

And a whole bunch of other stuff, you know, Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, work, play, school, all the usual. We'll keep you posted, just figured we should put something up in case you thought we just didn't want to blog anymore.

-Christian

Christmas lights

I love Christmas lights,  they just look so beautiful against a snowy back ground. This year we decided to take in some of the best that Salt Lake had to offer. We started by braving the bitter cold and headed to downtown Salt Lake.

A nice security man offered to snap this family picture of us!

The kids were happy to see all the candy windows at Macy's, I think the exact words were "wow, cool"

We took a moment to warm up at Deseret Book. They liked the machine that you could launch parachutes in and would have done that for the next few hours, if we had let them.

We did make them brave the cold though, mean parents that we are.

They didn't seem to mind too much though.

The lights really were gorgeous, we loved them.

We were even happy to have Kate and Aaron join us, even if it was too cold. 

 We also hit zoo lights this year something the kids were super excited to see again. 

Though not as cold as our visit to Temple Square it was still plenty cold so we huddled liked penguins to keep warm. 

The kids loved the lights and kept ewing and aweing over everything. It was a ton of fun to see their reactions.

Matty was very happy that he was the first on the rhino statue this time. That meant he got the top.

Then the other kids piled on, I don't think I can ever pass this statue without one of them saying "can we take a picture?"

James decided that it would be more fun to have a snow fight during our visit.

All in all a great time checking out the lights...even if it was a bit cold.