We had a nice week staying home from school and sleeping late.  Kevin had to work Monday and Tuesday, but joined us in our relaxing from Wednesday on!  It was really great!

On Monday, I took the four youngest to Toys R Us to use the gift cards they got from their grandma and grandpa Skinner.  That was the very longest they could possibly wait!  They had great fun picking out presents and played with them the rest of the day!

On Tuesday, the big present Kevin and I got for ourselves arrived!  We are now the proud owners of a fold-up, also folds-into-a-walking-desk treadmill!  I can walk and write at the same time and Kevin can do his running and walking without having to leave home.  Also, our kids are excited!  Bethany and Ben are especially enamored of it!

Kevin had a captivated audience.

Ben sings while he walks.  It's pretty cute!

On Wednesday, we made a family trip to Barnes and Noble!  Grandma and Grandpa Elton got the kids gift cards to use there.  We had so much fun!  So many books! So little time!  We worked so hard we took ourselves out to lunch at Sonic afterward with money from Grandma Mary!  We had to get back home before 1:00 because Cali, Chey, and Kevin had basketball practice then.  Sarah and Megan worked later and Mariah had basketball practice later, too.  Busy days, fun times!

Thursday was New Year's Eve!  And lucky us, the BYU Women's basketball team had a home game!  We all went (although Dad took Megan and Mariah back early since Meg had to work and Mariah had to go to basketball practice) and we even brought a couple of the twins' friends with us, too!  Since we never made it to a game last year, Ben was a much better spectator than he was when last we had come (when he was three!).  He danced during all the timeouts with his sisters and they even got featured on the jumbotron!  BYU played great and won!  It was fun.

The Chicken Dance after third quarter!

I decided they needed their picture taken with Jimmer Fredette!

That night, our friends, the Groslands, came over for our traditional Christmas Eve night of games, visiting, and snacking until midnight!  The kids always run in the snow in their bare feet at midnight, but this year we added a new twist and took the whole gang for a double loop around Brookside Drive (with our shoes on)!  We love those people!  It is always so fun!

Friday was my birthday!  Sooo, I slept in late and then my husband took me to see Star Wars VII!  We even got jumbo popcorn and some lemonade.  Yum!  Afterwards, we went to The Bombay House for an early dinner.  I even got a Mango Lassi!  Double Yum!  That night we all watched The Maze Runner in our family room.  It was a fun, fun day!  Happy Birthday to me!  That night I remembered to open my presents.  My mom made me a cute bag and Savannah sent me a t-shirt, too!

I can totally do the selfie thing!

Saturday we went sledding with Aunt Sanae and cousin Julia who were here dropping off cousins Anna and Erin just back from their missions and starting their semester at BYU!  Poor Julia doesn't get snow in California so she talked all of us into sledding!  We were glad that she did!  The kids (and Kevin!) all really liked it, but Ben especially ran back up EVERY time and let exactly .03 seconds elapse before he jumped back on the sled and went down again.  Wow!  He must enjoy that! Good thing we had a California girl teach us not to take our snow for granted!  We had a fun day.

That night Sarah, Megan, and Mariah cheered on Cali and Chey and Dad in their bantam basketball game.  They won again!  It was a great week!