December 2021 Visit with Grandma and Grandpa Hobbs

We were seriously blessed to have Sam's parents come over for Eli's birthday and Christmas. It had to be one of the most fun Christmases we've had. It was jam packed with activities, yet it was so nice to have extra hands on deck for the holidays. They drove in on the 20th and left on the 26th. We housed them in our converted garage and it seemed to work out nicely. After a day of shopping on the 21st, we decided to go to the Visitor's center at the LA temple to look at the lights and themed Christmas trees. It was absolutely beautiful!

Grandma and Grandpa brought festive gifts!

I mean, it's beautiful before you even walk in!

My favorite trees were the new and old world themed trees.

 

Snuggling up with Grandma!

Samta Claus!

Look at these faces!

The lights make this scene extra magical.

All these pictures are courtesy of Grandpa Hobbs, enjoy!

Sam still had to work on the 22nd, so I took Sam's parents to the Aquarium of the Pacific. We had fun showing them around our new favorite aquarium.

The beautiful outside.

The kids in front of their works of art swimming around.

Me with little miss.

<3

In front of the penguin exhibit.

She was so cute!

Reading up on some facts!

They are so beautiful.

Otter time.

These sea stars are so pretty!

Yep, gorgeous.

The bonnet-head shark makes its appearance.

Right outside with my beauties and their souvenirs. 

Next day, we celebrated Elijah's 6th birthday at Legoland. That will be the next post!

Early December 2021

We sure do love Christmas in this household. When I packed to move I minimized as much as I could. I didn't even bring a Christmas tree. I figured we could get a live Christmas tree so we didn't have to store one. Turns out we had plenty of storage and we decided to cave and buy us an even bigger Christmas tree. 9ft! For some reason we thought this house had 9ft ceilings, never mind! We ended up taking the top off our tree to make it fit. We'll be happy to have the full tree in Texas! Now for the little things we did before Christmas:

We took the leaves off our Thankful Tree and created snowflakes instead!

We had a blast making it!

Sam and I played for the ward Christmas party.

Tacky sweater contest! Sam won :)

 

Noah's first Christmas!

We made a gingerbread village. Here's Joseph's house.

Eden's house.

Elijah's.

And mine!

We had a good December, but the best part was yet to come. Elijah's birthday and Christmas!

A Nice, Quiet Thanksgiving

Sam, being a lowly first year fellow in 2021 was on call over Thanksgiving weekend. So we didn't do anything overly special. I think it was the first time we had Thanksgiving with only our little family! So not much to say, but enjoy the pictures.

Buttering up our ribeye roast.

Before the casseroles hit the oven!

Oh, ho ho ho ho oh ho, look at that!

Yessssssssss.

How dinner usually is for us!

Noah approved!

Our Thanksgiving tree, we each had a branch with five leaves.

Happy Thanksgiving!

One more picture for good measure.

Sunday after Thanksgiving we sat down and mailed hundreds of letters to people in the ward inviting them to church. It was a lot. Of. Work. We since were able to cut down some of the work as we had a couple more mail outs since then. Anyway, here's a rare photo of me on the blog!