Christmas

Christmas was crazy this year! It was fun as it always is, but man it was exhausting! I made the mistake of having surgery a few days before Christmas. Everything went well, but I probably would have done better if I would have had the surgery after Christmas. Oh well, here are some pictures of the highlights.
Christmas Eve with Brian's family.Every year we celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve with Brian's Family. It is so fun to spend time with both families and we had a blast spending Christmas Eve with the Anderson Clan. Averie LOVED opening all of her presents. She was soooo spoiled!One of her favorite gifts, the quacking duck. Averie is obsessed with ducks. She was very excited about this one.Aunt Lyndee and Uncle Matt got Averie a Pig Tent. She thinks it is about the best thing ever. She takes all of her blankets and stuffed animals inside and will fall asleep. It is so funny.
Grandma and Grandpa spoiled Averie with her very own Rocking Horse.
This isn't your typical rocking horse. This one will way it's tail and nay. At first she was a little scared of it, but now I can't keep her off of it. She even put a leash on the horse so she can drag it around the house.
Sergeant felt a little left out this year. He only had two presents, poor puppy.
Averie must have been pretty good this past year because Santa came. Her reaction was so cute! I tried to upload the video, but it must have been too big because it wouldn't work. Guess you will just have to take my word on how cute it was!

Gotta love crazy Christmas morning hair.After we finished up Christmas at our house, we headed to my parents to spend the rest of the day with my family. Averie was probably thinking, "More presents?!?" It's kind of fun to have 2 Christmases.
Mommy and Averie.
Averie loves stuffed animals. She was lucky enough to get a Panda and a baby Simba. Lucky girl!
Grandma and Grandpa spoiled her with her very own castle. She loves it!
Here she is playing with Easton, well showing him how to play, with his new toy. She is turning into a little bossy lady.
What a great Christmas! I love this time of year. The memories we build with our family and the spirit and remembrance of the Savior. I feel so blessed to have so many wonderful people in my life and I am so grateful for each one of them. I hope everyone had a safe and blessed Christmas as well.

Visit from Friends

Just before Christmas we had a very special visit from our friends from Denver. Diana and I have been best friends since we were 4. We don't get to see her and her family very often, but this year we were lucky enough to spend a couple of days with Diana, Sean and their adorable little boy, Andrew.
Andrew and Averie are 10 days apart. It is so fun to see the two of them interact! Elmo won both of them over and we were able to get a picture of the two of them sitting still for 2 minutes.
We had the two of them exchange gifts and both of them were really into shredding the paper.
After unwrapping the presents, the kids decided to clean up.If only they keep this interest in sweeping and mopping the floors!
Here they are enjoying some breakfast together.
Andrew seems to like it!
I dont' have any pictures to post, but we spent one of the days at the Aquarium. I have never gone to the Aquarium, but it was actually pretty cool. The kids really liked it and it was fun to see all the fish and animals. The trip came and went too quickly! I wish we lived closer to our friends, but it was really nice to see them!

Is it bad?

Is it bad that I strip my toddler down to her diaper, give her a bunch of markers, and let her go nuts? The occasional mark on the carpet and child are worth the 15 minutes of a happy kid!

Catching Up and Temple Square

I have not been the best blog keeper as of late. I will do my best to catch up! We have had some crazy things happen at the Anderson Household lately. One of the worst things was that my computer recently crashed. I learned a very valuable lesson through that experience. I had been thinking about backing up all my pictures lately, but it was too late. I lost EVERYTHING. Every picture of Averie, every family vacation... I was devastated to say the least. To spare you a very long story, I will just say we were very fortunate and were able to recover everything off my hard drive! I immediately saved everything to 4 different places as soon as I got it back. Let it be a reminder to back everything up if you haven't! Well since I have my pictures again, I can update you!

Every year we try to go to temple square around Christmas time to see the lights. Brian proposed on the 20th of December 5 years ago! I can't believe it has been that long ago. This was the first year that we took Averie. It was a much different experience than getting proposed to, let me tell ya! Chasing a 20 month old around temple square in the freezing cold is not as much fun as you would imagine! We made sure to have "Teddy" along for the trip.
We did manage to get a family picture at least.Brian and I manged to snap one of just us too. It's kind of funny that I am always wearing the same thing year after year. I am too lazy to track down the other years to prove my lact of originality, but I really have worn the same thing for the past five years. I think it's time to get a new coat, what do you think??
Averie loves her "PaPa".
The temple was gorgeous as always.

Love our little family tradition!