It was the week of Christmas! And the last day of school for the year, and Megan's birthday, and Kevin's birthday! All week was a party!

We celebrated Kevin's birthday on Wednesday. Kevin found us a way in to the gym at our old Brookside church and we all went there for some basketball games. We split into teams and made songs for our "country" so the other countries had to sing our song when we won! We played three-on-three, but also elimination, and a free-throw contest, too. Avery strolled the gym with her walker and had a great time, too!

Afterward, Megan and Ammon made salmon mango tacos for dinner and Kevin's mom and Jim came over after that for cheesecake, visiting, and some presents. It was a fun day.

The next day was Megan's birthday! In the morning, Sarah, Cali, and Chey joined Meg at the Provo Rec Center for some Zumba! They came to our house after lunch and made gingerbread houses together, Meg's idea. What a fun birthday activity! We gave Meg some presents and then Ammon picked her up after his work to take her out to dinner. It was a super fun day, too!

For Christmas Eve, we were able to go to Grandma and Grandpa Gazdik's for our traditional candlelight dinner! The kids prepared a program for us while we finished dinner. After dinner they performed a lipsync and the nativity! Then we had a small recital/talent show and then played chimes. Finally, we exchanged presents with Grandma and Grandpa. It was a lovely evening and a lot of fun, too!

The next day was Christmas! The kids "woke us up" at 7am. (We're getting to the point where they sleep longer than us!) Megan and Ammon spent the night and Sarah and McKay and Avery got here at 7 so we had the whole crowd! What a treat!! We opened presents from Santa and then had French toast breakfast before we needed to break and get ready for 9am church. 

Sarah and McKay had 10:30 church where they were singing in the choir and Megan and Ammon had 11:00 church where they were giving talks, so we regrouped at 1:30 and opened the rest of the presents from each other under the tree! Afterwards, we had a nice Christmas dinner with Grandma and Grandpa Gazdik (at our house this time). What a fun Christmas day! How blessed we all are! God blessed us everyone!

See the cute matching sweatshirts that our college kids made for us?

It was the last week of school for our college kids!! They all had finals to take, Cali had a paper to finish, and Mariah had her last shifts of work to finish. Mariah made the drive home on Thursday and we were so excited to see her!!  Yay! Cali and Chey didn't make it home until Saturday but now we will be together for two weeks. Yay!

Since Mariah's been home, she's gotten together with some old mission companions, gone to the temple with her three older sisters (and to sushi afterward), and watched two romantic Christmas movies with family. She still has managed to work in her daily runs even though our weather could conceivably freeze her solid! I've gotten lots of hugs and I love that!

Bethany had her band concert this week. She plays baritone in the 9th grade band. There are only five of them but only three could come to the concert. Good thing they could count on her! It was a fun concert with fun songs that they played really well! It's Beth's second favorite class--right after seminary!

Ben had a guitar recital on Friday. He played David Archuleta's "Glorious," and he did really great with it! We are proud of his progress and think it's super cool he can work with McKay!

It's been super cold this week and we got snow everyday!! Kevin and I can't even remember the last time it snowed for so long or that we got this much snow. I got stuck at the end of our driveway on Wednesday and had to shovel myself out. Savannah got stuck on Thursday and we shoveled and pushed her out! Crazy times! Kevin has been shoveling and shoveling. It does look really pretty, though, and it has brought the deer down from the mountain and into our yard.