Merry Christmas to Me!

DeAndra decided to give me something really wonderful to unwrap this Christmas!

She's more beautiful today than when she wore this dress the first time.

DeA and I decided to head down to the temple on Boxing Day. It was a beautiful drive down, but mostly because DeA was with me.

She was especially stunning in front of the pretty sunset.

Thanks to life and the kids, we hadn't been to a session in too long and it was great to be there with her.

The kids are really taking advantage of their vacation time.

DeA's favorite Christmas tradition is the "clearing of the junk".

As cozy as a  beautiful bug in a rug.

Did you know that a stick of butter is a 1/4 pound and not a 1/4 cup? I used to but somewhere along the time that knowledge escaped my brain. Thankfully DeA was around to help quadruple the no-bake batch.

Ryker was pretty wild this New Year's Eve.

DeA will say that she stayed up until two, but she took the hours of 9, 10, and 11 off.

Rock had a bonfire with his peeps at the loading area in the snow, it looked like they had fun.

Christmas Joy!

Christmas Eve has to include homemade pizzas and Ryker makes some very good ones.

Rissa hit the bottle pretty hard.

Rock spent all night engraving RAE onto every piece of the toolset that he got Grandpa

Mrs. Claus was busy wrapping and preparing and gathering Christmas.

The kids waited until 6:30 to start the fun. Gpa and Gma stayed until Rissa texted to say that the more fun kids were ready to open their presents.

It was a fun morning and I was thankful that the kids were thankful.

Teenagers

Ryker is evolving into the Nutty Professor.

Leo is running out of places to sleep in his room.

Chayo surprised us with tamales! It was a Christmas miracle!

They were still pretty hot.

Leo Boy said he wanted "help" assembling his Legos, but what he really wanted was someone to sit by him while he did it and to tell him how great he was a Legos.

Rock received a new regulation size goal but ran out of steam during the assembly process when he had to string the net. Ryker helped out while Rock was sleeping. It was a selfless act of love by a brother that only wanted to be the first one to use the regulation size goal.

Beautiful DeA in her Christmas jammies

It did not take long for her to start pulling out the junk and burning it down.

It almost could be a sick album cover or something.

DeA was excited to gift the butt calendar to her nephews. It was a big hit.

The Christmas cheer was too much for some of the kids.