December Extras

 This picture is really the only picture I have of my kids up north when we went to the Mason family Christmas party which we did for the first time AFTER Christmas.  We celebrated it at Tallie's this year and had a good time exchanging gifts and visiting together with everyone. My parents gave the two older kids their very own ukelele's since Granny has been teaching them every time they get together lately.  They loved these! They came with their own cases and everything.  They gave Collin a huge Olaf which he of course loved!  It was a great evening.

That weekend Tallie suited and boarded up Jaquelle an took her snow boarding for the first time down some sledding hills near her home. She was INCREDIBLE.  Seriously, I have no idea how she did so well, having never done it before.  It was so much fun to watch her.  She almost never fell and had complete control and just went down easily.  Seth didn't try because his collar bone was still broken from slamming into a neighbor boy while jumping on the Perkins trampoline. But tried sledding a few time until he got nervous that he would hurt it even more. 

And then the above picture is before church on Sunday.  I love Collin just leaning on Gaven.  Cousins!

 Seth spreading his BYU love with his sister.  All of that stuff is his.  But he is cute that he wanted everyone to feel apart of HIS team.

 Jaq got this for Christmas and  I got to say, I had so much fun with it.  I remember these from when I was a kid and they are hours and hours of fun.  So one night after she went to bed, I made this art piece for her.

 Cuddle time

 Mermaid blankets.

Our busy December!

Christmas Morning

 

 Collin was surprisingly not too concerned about getting down to business of opening presents, but rather saw the boxes of cereal and wanted breakfast....like now.

 

 but he did get into it eventually.

 Seth and his loot

 Jaquelle 2014 Christmas

Collin Christmas 2014

I guess we didn't take as many pictures as video's but hopefully we captured it there.  It was a fun and magical morning followed by a very chill day. Merry Christmas.

Christmas EVE!

The excitement is growing!!!  Everyone's equipped with their new jammies and its time for..... bed!

 Before Santa......

 After Santa!!

A few things around Christmas time.

 One Monday for family night we got to watch my friend's little boy and Collin enjoyed reading to him.

 We took him and our kids over to Debra Ley's home (a woman in our ward) who has an incredible array of Christmas trees throughout her large home. The kids have a fantastic time finding the 100+ baby nativity scenes around the house and seeing all the tree's theme decorated in each room. She has an incredible electric train and always serves hot chocolate, cookies and/or herbal tea.  Such a great, fun Christmas tradition.

 Little Ben!

 This was Collin who fell asleep in this totally chilled, relaxed position.  Totally made me laugh. Who can fall asleep like that??

 

 ....Because I am the coolest home ever! Errr, I mean Melf and Kelf are the coolest.  We have 2 elves at Christmas time that do funny things around the house.  This time "they" created a fantastic toy town with action figures, train tracks, a dance off between princesses and star wars action figures. :)

Cuddlin' on the couch in the basement after the kids are in bed.

MORRIS FAMILY CHRISTMAS LETTER!!

Dear Family and Friends,
       Merry Christmas! This year has been crazy, but full of a lot of adventures!  
  This spring Cordelle took Wendy skiing for the first time. It was interesting. Jaquelle cut about 10 inches off her hair and joined her mom for a girls weekend at Lagoon, where she and her dance group danced in a national competition (Jaq that is...ha!). Cordelle did a lot of travel for work and we finally purchased our first tent trailer and took it out on the desert for Wendy's family's Easter reunion camping trip. No more tents!! In May we celebrated our 11 year anniversary and are happy to say, we still sorta like each other. ;)
 This summer we had the opportunity to go back to Disneyland because Cordelle had a conference in Southern California and just couldn't pass it up. We were able to keep it a surprise for the kids which is the only way to go....and they were ecstatic!  Then, a few months later we got to take the kids to Yellowstone for the first time as part of Cordelle's family's reunion.  Combine that with Carrie Underwood at Stadium of Fire, Girls Camp, and a huge "unplugged" summer program for the kids that we felt like we barely slowed down this summer.  But we'd rather be busy than bored. :)
  The end of summer and the start of Fall brought birthdays for everyone but Wendy (Feb birthday).  Collin turned 2, Seth turned 8, Jaq turned 6 and Cordelle turned....(do you think he'd care if I put his age?  Is that allowed?)  Hum....Anyways.  He had a birthday too.  With Seth's 8th birthday came his baptism in September! It was a fun day with family and friends and the most memorable part of the day for him was, "the water, because it was soo warm." Haha! With fall comes the start of school where Seth started 2nd grade and Jaq FINALLY started Kindergarten!  At our house fall also means a lot of soccer and football.  Seth has suddenly discovered the game of football and is BYU's newest, truest and bluest fan!  He eats, thinks and lives for anything BYU or football and Cordelle is just eating it up.
  As winter and Christmas approach there is an excitement that only a house with little kids can bring.  Its infectious.  As we watch Collin now talking and having full blown conversations we have realized how quickly they are growing.  Sometimes it makes us want to slow down time and other times we want them to hurry and "grow up past this phase." Its a roller coaster for sure but there are definitely more blessings than we can count.  
  We think we have a pretty incredible little family, and are so grateful to be where we live.  We are mindful every day of the blessings that come from having the knowledge of the gospel in our lives.  We are honored to know that the birth of Jesus was only the beginning of the miracles He would bring to this earth.  We could never become who we are meant to become, accomplish those tasks we wished to achieve, or experience the joy we hoped for in this life, without HIM.  We hope you all feel His love especially this time of year, even if it just comes in the form of a little extra gratitude and hope for the people you love. 

Merry Christmas!  

Love, 

The Morris'

Oh kids!

 We decided to give Collin a flu shot even though its late in the season.  Yea, turns out he had some sort of allergic reaction that I mildly freaked out about.  Pretty sure we might take a break from the flu shot for a couple of years. 

Notice, his right (left in the picture) collar bone.  yup. He broke it playing with some friends on a trampoline.  Wasn't able to use it for a couple of months, but remarkably got pretty coordinated playing football and basketball left handed!  Haha!

PERFORMANCE!

Jaquelle at her Christmas dance performance!

Seth singing with his 2nd grade class for his Christmas performance

Collin performing his "cheese" at the dinner table.  :)

Thanksgiving Break

 I am guessing this was Cordelle who took this picture.  I almost never take pictures of my food.  ANYWAYS, thanksgiving was with the Durrant side this year out in Vernon.  It was nice and full of delicious foods.  We spent the rest of the time back and forth with the families. Collin was going through  a really weird thing.  He started getting extremely frustrated with EVERYTHING, especially eating.  It was like he had a virus one day with the regular symptoms and then he just snapped, it started effecting his personality and he was just off and weird.  We were really worried because it was so out of character for him.  We took him in, but they found nothing.  I did some energy work with him and it seemed to help.  Weird though.  I wonder what that was all about.  I've never seen a virus do that before.  Made the thanksgiving weekend difficult to say the least. 

 

One night Cordelle took Seth to his high school friend's house for a Jazz game, so I took Jaq and Collin downtown to see the lights with my parents and Krista and kids.  We had a good time.

 Finding the leaves by our car.

 Driving the model T

 cute cold faces

At temple square.

Family Pictures 2015

 COLLIN : Age 2

 SETH: Age 8

JAQUELLE: age 6