Well, another Christmas has come and gone. It’s crazy how fast time flies these days. It seems like just yesterday we were moving into our home and now it’s five years and the twins later. With 4 kids, we’re getting closer and closer to needing the basement done just to have somewhere to put all their crap. And as the kids get bigger, their crap gets bigger too. We had a fun Christmas though. I especially had fun picking out boy toys for Jack. In the past I’ve been a little indifferent to which toys were on the Christmas list because none of them interested me, but this year I got to let Santa know all the fun toys that Jack needed. I’ll admit that it was a little difficult to restrain myself cause there were just too many sweet toys. All in good time though.

This year Hailey and Mallory both got new scooters to cruise the neighborhood on along with Meebas and some new clothes. Annie got a new dolly with some fun accessories and a new car to ride on and Jack got a bunch of Tonka trucks, a Shake’n'go race track (which has become the most played with toy so far) and a giant Tonka dump truck (that he can currently ride in). We also got a few new movies including Sleeping Beauty and luckily the Rinquests decided to replace our destroyed Tinker Bell movie (see here for reference).

After getting up at 5 am thanks to Hailey, we spent a couple hours opening all our presents and making a huge mess of the front room. After that we ventured out into the crazy Christmas storm to see lots of family. We had breakfast at Grandma and Grandpa Laursens and the kids got to spend time playing with Wally, Will and Georgia. Around noon we drove to Sandy to see Nana and Papa Haymond and play with Dallin, Weston and Porter. We got to have yummy Hawaiian pancakes and I got to steal a short nap. Eventually we made it back home and after being away all day and having not shoveled any of the snow that had accumulated all day, we ended up getting stuck in our own driveway as we tried to pull into the garage. Luckily the neighbor was also just getting home and offered to let me use his snow blower which I thankfully borrowed and dug out the van. It was a great end to a fun day, but as Emily said, I’m glad it’s done with. Now to start preparing for next Christmas cause it’ll be here before we can blink.

Emily found some “cute” fabric and decided to make the girls some new Sunday dresses. Here they are doing their modeling thing. I think posing for the camera is their favorite part of new clothes. We definitely have a family full of posers (as I’ve mentioned before).

We went to Bear Lake for Thanksgiving this year and while we were waiting for the women to finish up with dinner Mallory and I cruised up the canyon with Grandpa and Tony and Janis and family for some shotgun shootin’ fun. We shot some clays and then pulled out the pistols for some target shooting. Mallory even took a couple shots with the shotgun and uncle Ben’s .22 revolver. After some clean-up (the kids collected all the used shotgun shellls) we headed back down to the cabin for some turkey. Unfortunately we had to be back in town the following day so Emily could be to work so we drove up to the cabin early and came home late the same day. By the time we got home we were all ready to crash, but we always have fun at the cabin.

Hailey went to the dentist last month and apparently he told Emily that Hailey was in for quite an orthodontic experience. We kinda already knew that, but what we didn’t know was that we needed to get started right away in order to help correct the weirdness that’s going on in her mouth. As a result of this announcement, Hailey now has a newly installed apparatus in the roof of her mouth. The purpose of this unit is to widen her mouth a bit for the teeth that still need to come in. Each day we have to crank a little gear built into the little thing which pushes her upper molars apart. I guess it’s doing its job, but it’ll be interesting to see how they plan to correct everything that’s apparently “wrong” with her mouth. Hooray for modern technology and medicine I guess.

Here’s a couple pictures of Hailey’s pre-hardware smile.