The Holidays

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On a holiday carousel at Bass Pro, Baton Rouge

meeting Rudolph

Over at Edgewater Mall, here in Biloxi, we got to go watch Santa and his elves skydive in from the North Pole.

Me with the fun sister missionaries: Armstrong, McElderry, Garzand

FHE making gingerbread houses with some friends

Xander's was awesome

My little reindeer Will in a school play

He and his friend Peter, as Santa

Seeing Santa at Marina Park, here on base

We had our tree set up early this year!

My Mardis Gras bead art that I made this year

Yes it has lights in it and all :)  My inspiration was a framed tree like this my grandma made from costume jewelry at her house.

Xander was so brave for his school's Christmas program.  He played Jingle Bells in front of a huge crowd. Here is a song from a different Christmas piano recital in December.  Proud of this boy.  He started piano this year, so this is a big accomplishment.

Xander and his piano teacher Cori after a recital

All ready for New Years Eve. Umm, we had plenty of food. The boys had no problem staying up, and wanted to do it again the next night. We said no.

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, my two front teeth…  Will lost 2 teeth in 2 days, but they were both after Christmas, so I guess he'll have to wait for next year lol.  Claire wanted to show her teeth too.

Audubon December

Our year pass to the New Orleans Audubon attractions expired the end of December, so we had to get a last trip in. We saw the aquarium last month with the Bolke's, so it was time for a last visit to the zoo and the Insectarium. Nice weather for December around here!

The kids each found a duck their size to sit on.

So excited to find a tortoise walking around.

See the Silverback in the background?

Will surrounded by baby alligators

Just rocking our chairs down by the bayou.

Jaguar jungle

This is my very favorite fountain, in all of New Orleans, and it's found at the zoo.

We did Dino Adventure this last time.

Mesmerized by the roaring dinosaur.

A stop to the double decker Arby's in New Orleans. Check out that stained glass roof.

Insectarium

All three kids checking out the cockroach house

Bugs for tast-testing

Southwest Waxworms, Cinnamon Bug Crunch, Crunchy Cajun Crickets

Claire trying one

Cooking up some mealworms. Gross!

Xander tried everything.

You go into the Butterfly Garden on the way out.

One landed on Will

Claire was excited when one landed on her back.

We'll miss you Audubon attractions! We've definitely gotten our money's worth this year!!!

Snow UT, Bolke's in Biloxi, & a Thanksgiving dinner success

UTAH VISIT

So I found a steal of a deal on flights if I travelled to UT on Halloween.  The kids and I thought it would be great to go see some family for the weekend, so we hopped on a plane, and went and did our trick-or-treating there.

We visited both grandparents, and saw a lot of my side of the family.  We did a coupon scavenger hunt for dinner one night, a classic, as it was a yearly tradition growing up in my family as the Happenings book was expiring.  We went to dinner with Stu to El Farol, but the rest of the Curtis family was out of town on their many adventures, so we missed them.

As we were leaving, it started snowing and the boys were so excited to be able to run around in the snow for a few minutes. You see, now that we've lived in the coast of Mississippi for almost 3 years, and Nevada for the 4 years before that, they have been snow-deprived.  I was happy for them until they had to de-ice our plane, which made us miss our layover in Denver, and get home 10 hours later.  In good and bad news there's another story that goes along with that, and the airline ended up refunding all our money for another mistake they made, so the trip ended up being free!

The Bolkes (Blair's sister & family) were road tripping, and came and saw us in Biloxi for a week. We kept busy, busy, busy! We had a shrimp boil, and I made jambalaya for the first time, we roasted hot dogs, and had a campfire & smores.  We went gator watching, pier walking, park hopping, sightseeing. We strolled the streets of Ocean Springs and got Tatonuts. We spent a day in New Orleans and went to the Audubon aquarium there, and Cafe du Monde for beignets. We ate at The Shed and Darwells and the Beau Rivage. As you can tell, we had lots of fun.

and of course there are always pretty sunset beach photos when you go to the beach in the evening:

Annie

Dan joins the fun

Blair & Claire

The family at The Shed, eating some BBQ

 Xander was working on a science fair project. Experiment time.

 It was my very first time hosting Thanksgiving. Everything turned out (cooked the turkey in a bag), and Blair even got to join us for 1/2 hour and then had to go back to work.

Our friends, the Bennetts joined. Our husbands work together, and both had to work on Thanksgiving, so we figured it might just be us, so we decided we were fine with whatever worked out.

Claire and her little co-conspirator friend Jamie, who kept finding things to get into.