December 2016
December 2016
Another favorite December tradition - The Live Nativity at Tuacahn! The girls were amazed by the real camels and Alan was adorably bundled the whole time with nothing but his nose and big eyes peeping out.
So many many pictures of us loving on Big Al. We can't get enough of him.
1) Many drives by the temple to see the progress.
2) Birthday pancakes Burkie and the girls made me.
3) Darcie and cousin Danny hiding in the playroom.
4) Daphne catching snowflakes on her tongue moments before slipping and sliding on her bum into wet snow!
5) Uncle Lij coming over for a visit one morning and taking time to stack a block tower with the girls. So nice to spend time with him. I remember this conversation made me cry and I felt such love for my brother.
6) Burke's creepy man playdough creation while playing with the girls.
The kiddos with their stocking goodies on Christmas morning and Daphne with stars in her eye when seeing the tree! It was so much fun to have Daphne and Darcie playing off each other's excitement and thrilled over their presents all day.
For the past 4 years I have taken a few of our family video clips from the year and set them to music to recap a few highlights from the past 12 months. It is easily my favorite Christmas tradition now. I can hardly wait for everyone to get through opening and enjoying their presents before making them all sit down at the TV and watching it with me. This year the girls wanted to watch all the other years preceding 2016 and they "remembered" things afresh like our sweet puppy Roxy, being born (yup, Darcie saw herself as a baby and cried out, "I weemember dat!") and numerous trips to Co-Op Mountain. It's such a time consuming project, but one that I take great pleasure in each year.
The girls sledding on the small hill in front of our house the day after Christmas with Burkie.
1) Awesome Star Wars characters found while exploring for lights in Cedar City.
2) Burke took the girls to Moana with the Adams family. When I saw it months later I was horrified that our 2 year old Darcie had seen all the scary lava monster parts and finally realized why she had started having nightmares at that time. #MomFail.
3) I love getting Christmas cards and seeing how everyone's family is growing.
4) A hilarious lawn display Ellen sent when they went light touring around San Antonio.
One of my favorite December traditions - singing a Christmas song followed by reading Christmas stories in the glow of the tree lights every night before bed.
Look at those beautiful babies! Geez, I love 'em. In the left bottom corner Daphne is posing with the hug stack of books that we read together in one sitting one cold winter day.
Burke cut down a small tree at Co-op just for the girls to put in their room. They were beyond thrilled to have their own tree and decorate it just the way they wanted.
Another favorite December tradition - The Live Nativity at Tuacahn! The girls were amazed by the real camels and Alan was adorably bundled the whole time with nothing but his nose and big eyes peeping out.
Both girls were way leery of Santa and refused to sit on his lap. The lights were so pretty and we enjoyed pippin' hot coco after the nativity at Tuacahn. Both girls passed out cold before we hit the freeway.
My fabulous big sister, Cassie, came up from St. George on my birthday and made for me the traditional candy cane and whip cream cake that I've had nearly every year my whole life! She then sent Burke and I out for our Western Ag Christmas dinner at Rusty's up the canyon. Seriously don't know what I would have done these past 8 years without this sister of mine.
Burke, Vickie and Mike Murdoch, Darren and Kami Lovell, me and Alan. We count our lucky stars every time we think about Burke's wonderful job at Western Ag. Seriously, these folks and the company have been so good to us.
Birthday dessert. Deeeeeeeeeeee-vine.
A note Daphne taped to my door when she got in trouble and was so mad at me. No happiness in her lift at this time apparently.
Thankfully the next day I got three more cards taped to my door. See how the smilie faces have check marks on them and the frown has an x? Life was good again. :)
Listened to the audio version of The Magnolia Story and loved every second of it. So wish I could be like the power house couple Chip and Joanna Gaines.
Beautiful rainbow one extremely windy day while dropping off Daphne and Sophie at school.
Our 8th Annual Ugly Sweater Party! So awesome to have Elijah and Marinda with us this year. Daphne sneaked out of her room to play the dice rolling game where you unwrap a present with oven mitts and was laughing hysterically! Unfortunately I missed both games of Werewolf at the end due to kids needing to be fed and put back to bed over and over again.
Daphne submitted a piece of artwork for her school reflection's contest and got a bronze medal. Oh you should have seen her shyly stand up at the school Christmas assembly to get her medal and certificate - melt my heart! I love the admiration you can see Darcie has for her in the second picture where she's looking up at big sis.
15 minutes getting dressed in all the snow clothes. 3 minutes of actual snow play. 20 minutes cuddling in front of the fire. Repeat.
Headed out for family night to play Santa to a family in need and laugh hysterically while watching Burke doorbell ditch and trying to sprint across snowy yards to our hideout without being caught!
So many many pictures of us loving on Big Al. We can't get enough of him.
1) Many drives by the temple to see the progress.
2) Birthday pancakes Burkie and the girls made me.
3) Darcie and cousin Danny hiding in the playroom.
4) Daphne catching snowflakes on her tongue moments before slipping and sliding on her bum into wet snow!
5) Uncle Lij coming over for a visit one morning and taking time to stack a block tower with the girls. So nice to spend time with him. I remember this conversation made me cry and I felt such love for my brother.
6) Burke's creepy man playdough creation while playing with the girls.
Holding Darcie's head wound while we waited at the Insta Care
On Christmas EVE Eve, I had just gone downstairs to feed Alan in the rocking chair when I suddenly heard a sickening WHACK upstairs followed by a moment of silence and then a piercing scream and wail. I thought the girls were fighting and felt so frustrated and called from my room while trying not to disturb Alan, "Girls, what happened?" When there was no answer I grouched, "Girls, come here right now!" I was looking down at Alan as they rounded the corner and it wasn't until they were in my room that I looked up and saw blood pouring down Darcie's face! I gasped and interrupted Alan's feeding (which of course made him wail) while Daphne was fast talking about what happened and Darcie kept screaming and crying. It was pure chaos. I rushed Darcie to the kitchen sink and to examine her and found a gash on the back of her head that looked horribly nasty and was still gushing blood everywhere. Apparently the girls had been jumping on our upstairs couch which sits right under the windowsill. Darcie had been playing on the couch, slipped and smacked her head on the back of the sill. She had tracked blood all the way from the couch upstairs onto the tan carpet leaving drops of blood all the way down the stairs, down the hall and into my bedroom. I called Burke in a panic as I tried to convince her to let me get her clothes off of her so we could clean her up and hold a wash cloth to the wound. Burke left work immediately and got home about 10 minutes later, took one look at it and loaded us up to take Darcie to the Insta Care while Daphne went to play at the Quintanillas. In the end they glued her head back together instead of using staples or stitches, but by the time we got home our poor little lady was so worked up that she was also seriously sick. She threw up that night and was sick on Christmas Eve and was still low on energy on Christmas day.
Some amazing family gifted our family with the Twelve Days of Christmas with each day dedicated to a gift that Jesus Christ had given us. For example, one day the tag read, "On the 4th day of Christmas Jesus Christ gave sight to the blind" and the gift was a Christmas movie. On the back of the tags would also be a correlating scripture. My kiddos loved it so much and would sit upstairs every night staring out the window trying to "catch" our elves! I wish I had taken a picture of each of the gifts because they were so cute and thoughtful. The last night we left a neon yellow poster board with a thank-you care and small gift.
The culminating gift on the last night from our secret family was this beautiful picture of Christ with an infant, of course in memory of our Aiden boy. We all had a good cry together and felt so very loved. Later that night I posted the above picture with the following on Facebook.
To the wonderful family who has been doing the Twelve Days of Christmas for us...may the blessings of heaven shower down on you! Our girls have been so excited each night as they wait to try and catch you and have been delighted with every thoughtful gift. Burke and I have been so touched by the nightly themes based on Jesus Christ's life and impressed with your creative gift ideas. But tonight's culminating gift was the perfect reminder of our Savior's promise that through him all might live again. When Daphne opened it she started to cry and said, "Mom, I think it's supposed to remind us of Aiden." Thank you for thinking of us and our angel son during this busy holiday season. #lighttheworld
P.S. The wind must have knocked down our giant neon thank you card (or maybe it was too big to sprint with!), but we left a gift for you. We will leave it on the doorstep tomorrow night too if you want to come get it! Xoxo
P.S. The wind must have knocked down our giant neon thank you card (or maybe it was too big to sprint with!), but we left a gift for you. We will leave it on the doorstep tomorrow night too if you want to come get it! Xoxo
The kids on Christmas Eve dressed up for a fancy dinner. You can see how sick Darcie was with those red rimmed eyes in the middle picture, but she was so excited about Christmas that she was trying to hold on as long as she could, but crashed halfway through dinner and went straight to bed.
Fondu perfection with french bread, balsamic brussel sprouts, meatballs, grapes and dessert for Christmas Eve dinner.
Burke exhausted in front of the Christmas tree after helping me set up everything once the kids were all in bed. I love playing Santa!
The kiddos with their stocking goodies on Christmas morning and Daphne with stars in her eye when seeing the tree! It was so much fun to have Daphne and Darcie playing off each other's excitement and thrilled over their presents all day.
Christmas was on a Sunday and it was lovely to go to church and continue to put the focus on Jesus Christ, his birth and life.
The girls sledding on the small hill in front of our house the day after Christmas with Burkie.
1) Awesome Star Wars characters found while exploring for lights in Cedar City.
2) Burke took the girls to Moana with the Adams family. When I saw it months later I was horrified that our 2 year old Darcie had seen all the scary lava monster parts and finally realized why she had started having nightmares at that time. #MomFail.
3) I love getting Christmas cards and seeing how everyone's family is growing.
4) A hilarious lawn display Ellen sent when they went light touring around San Antonio.
The stars aligned beautifully over the holidays resulting in the rare gathering of a good portion of the Bush family (my parents, the Kirbys, the Murphys, the Ridings and the Bushes (Elijah's family)) as we gathered to enjoy festivities together culminating in Alan's Baby Blessing on New Years Day. The fun started with skiing for some of the family and pizza the first day and bowling the next. I laid low with Baby Alan much of the time as I still had a lot of fears of having him around big crowds of people.
We loved having some one on one time with my parents decorating a gingerbread train the first night they got into town.
On New Year's Eve, Marinda and Elijah hosted "The Ugly Bug Ball" - the weirdest Bush family tradition of them all! This hails back to when I was about 9 or 10 years old and New Years Eve fell on the Sabbath, so my parents wouldn't let my siblings go out to celebrate with friends. Who knows who came up with the idea or why we all went along with it, but we ended up all getting dressed up as various "bugs" and having a dance party in the basement with the theme song being, "The Ugly Bug Ball" from the very old and very forgettable Disney movie, "Summer Magic". And it stuck. Now any time my family is together over New Years, we always throw an Ugly Bug Ball on New Years Eve and get decked out. I'm sure my oldest nephew, Zakia, who is now a super cool teenager thinks we are the weirdest family on the planet! Which we probably are!
Seeing my parents, siblings, nieces and nephews dote on little Alan David was probably one of the greatest highlights of December for me. For the Murphys, it was their first time meeting him in person and the first time the Kirbys had seen him since Aiden's burial. Although still a tiny peanut, it was nice not to have him SO tiny anymore that I couldn't let other people hold him for fear of germs. They all confirmed what we already knew - Alan is one special baby.
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