Christmas Day 2011

Christmas gets funner every year. With the addition of new babies and our older ones starting to understand the meaning -it's really been a blast celebrating and creating new traditions.

I'm sad to say I didn't take a lot of pictures on Christmas Day. Mostly just pics of the morning when we opened presents. It was a super fun day though and the kids got some great stuff!

 Opening their big present from Santa... a playhouse! Yay!! I'm so excited to have something for them in our backyard come spring/summer time.

 Gabe crashed on the floor after testing out all of his cool new stuff!

 For now we have the playhouse set up in our office/playroom. The kids love eating their meals here when we let them :)

Carriage Ride and Christmas Eve

So this year we had the opportunity last minute to take the kids on a carriage ride with my mom and it was SO much fun! We were able to get a carriage that was big enough for all of us to go together and once we were in the carriage it was surprisingly toasty. If you've never been on one you should check em out! The kids loved it!

CHRISTMAS EVE

 Opening jammies at Grandma Kelly's!

 Grandma Kelly always finds us the best new books to add to our collection!

 Every year we read "grateful" letters at Grandma and Grandpa Swenson's house and then open the traditional jammies!

 This year Santa brought some "misfit" stuffed animals for the kids to open too!

 This zebra had the wrong color stripes but Santa still wanted him to have a home :)

 We sleep over at Grandma Kelly's house on Christmas Eve! The kids had a blast!! They were so cute sleeping in their sleeping bags. They were definitely excited for all of us to be having a big sleepover.

 They were so pooped and excited for Santa to come that they didn't have any troubles falling asleep.

All the loot after me, my mom, and Aunt Lauren set everything up. Of course these were our presents combined with those from Santa and grandma, but we barely had room to sit and open the next day. So fun!!! I'm so excited to keep up the tradition of sleeping at grandma's. I had a friend in high school who did this with her family and I knew I wanted to do it with mine when I had kids.

Holiday Posts -Temple Lights/Christmas Card

Just like they are for everyone, the holidays were pretty busy around here so I haven't had a chance to post about the fun things we've been doing. Instead of making one ginormous post with lots and lots of pictures I'm going to break em up.

About a week before Christmas we went and walked through the Temple Lights with The Swenson family. Cairi had a lot of fun because she reallllly loves hanging out with her cousins lately and of course she loved seeing all the lights. Penelope slept through the entire thing -she zonked out about 2 minutes before we got out of the car and didn't wake up til we put her back in. It was pretty cute and I guess that means we bundled her up enough! Gabe had fun seeing the lights and saying "Chee" or "Sta" (star). He did pretty good in his stroller but once he saw the water all he wanted to do was jump in, he was pretty sad that he couldn't. It was a fun night despite the cold and how busy it was. 

 The stroller babies! Two cute dudes and my sleeping beauty.

 Cai and her "best friend" as she refers to Cassy :)

Obviously this is a little late, but we hope your holidays were wonderful! Here's a Christmas Greeting from yours truly, the Swenson fam!

Sam I Am and the Layton Lights!!

I LOVE the holidays and one of our favorite things to do during this season is go see the Layton Lights with my family. We went to my mom's for some grub, went to the lights and then came back for Survivor night! It was a great night and the kids loved the lights so much we had to drive through them after we got done walking through the whole display. Then Cairi said "just one mo time pease mommy, just one mo". Haha, needless to say we will probably be going back, at least to drive through it again!

About to pull all the DVD's off the shelf... her favorite!

Penelope is my eatin' machine these days!

Playin with the new car mat at gramma's after the lights!

I also had my targeted ultrasound last week and it's crazy to think that I'm already half way through this pregnancy. I know having 3 babies keeps me pretty busy but I still can't believe how fast the time has flown. With my other pregnancies I would get pretty anxious because I just wanted to meet my baby and what not but I'm trying to enjoy this one and savor it since it will most likely be my last.

We've decided on a name for our little man, meet Samuel Max Swenson. Max is Chris' grandpa's name and all of the kids have meaningful middle names so Max was perfect for Samuel! This is our bean at almost 23 weeks.

 I can't wait to see what he's going to look like!!