Celebrating Christmas Eve 20-12 with the Fergy's

We started off celebrating the holiday eve with some fitting holi-cakes, every since Halloween when we made ghost pancakes our kids have been really into seasonally shaped pancakes so for Christmas we made reindeer. We use to make Rudolph-cakes but the kiddos got into the cranberries and ate them all so we just have to resort to making normal reindeer (normally they had 2 antlers but Sophie ate one before we got a pic).

After breakfast we suited up for the traditional Christmas eve Elf viewing at Gardner Village. We have gone of Christmas eve for 3 years now and I love it because we have the whole place to ourselves, unfortunately this year however we got a bit wet on our elf-venture. More than seeing the elves the kids were most thrilled with watching the ducks, especially the one with the craziest hair-do I have ever seen!

After finally prying-dragging the kids away from the ducks we went through the rest of the elf displays. We even stopped to see Santa's naughty and nice list where we still noted Josh and Sophie on the nice list and Camille on the naughty. We didn't see Phoebe's name, but she swears she saw it on the nice list.

After making it through the elves we went home to enjoy all the snow that started falling right after we left  and realax! We got to cuddle, watch movies, and since I made our dinner in the morning (our traditional lasagna, bread, salad & Italian Sodas) and bought pre-made bread rolls and gingerbread dough I didn't have to spend the whole day cooking, which was AWESOME! Note to self: I need to remember how nice this year was for future years and not try and overdo it with making it all from scratch or leaving it all to the last minute to put together.

After dinner all the kids were REALLY excited to finally decorate the cookies that they help me cut out earlier that day. I was really surprised on the much improved decorating skills we saw this year, only Josh did the blob decor this year.

When we cleaned up our messed and hosed down a couple of our children they got to open their Christmas eve pajama pails to see what cute things the pj elves brought them this year.

 We then did our reading of he nativity while we acted it out with our little people sets, this is one of Phoebe's very favorite things to do all season.

We then had all of the kids pick out one cookie to leave Santa on his plate and then quickly ran out to throw the reindeer some carrots out on the very snowy front lawn. 

Afterwards we quickly ran up to get in bed, gave our traditional do not go downstairs before you come in mom and dad's room talk, gave kisses to all and let 4 very excited kiddos dream about all the exciting things they might get on Christmas. We took the rest of the evening to put put all the Christmas presents, watch It's a Wonderful Life on TV, & pre-make Christmas breakfast cinnamon rolls and dinner time crescent rolls.

Phoebe's Preschool Christmas Program '12

Right before Christmas break Phoebe's Preschool put on their Christmas program where they say lots of cute songs and did a gift exchange.

This year for Phoebe's gift she gave a jumbo sticker book and she was given a motorized toothbrush which she has been absolutely ecstatic about, unfortunately, the batteries in it only lasted about 1 wk and I have been too lazy to replace them.

This year for Christmas Phoebe gave Mrs. Thompson the jumbo size of "Handitizer" (as Phoebe calls it) with her name on it, because what teacher couldn't use that??!!

Grandma Fergy was able to come to Phoebe's program which is always special for her!

I love the cute little programs Phoebe's school puts on but my favorite part was Phoebe's hat, because it was in her words "Hew-gantic" on her.

Santa Take 2

Our ward Christmas party which fell in the middle of December this year gave all our kiddo plus their cousin Afton, who we were watching, a second chance to ask the big guy what they wanted for Christmas. Before the party unfortunately, we had to sit in the dark for an hour at our house with no power, so when it was time to go we were really looking forward to it and luckily it didn't disappoint. We had a yummy dinner catered by Golden Corral, one of my Dad's favorite Utah eating spots. 

When then had a cute program followed by a Santa magic show. All he kiddos enjoyed the how and even I was stumped by a few of his Christmas magic tricks. Afton and Josh were bet buds the who evening and I loved how they were sitting so cutely together.

I know Sophie looks mad in her pic but he wasn't just restless to get down.

I thought all the videos were pretty cute and I have no idea why Cami asked for "pink" when all year she had been asking for Tinkerbell, good thing Santa had an insider who knew better.

Orange You Gonna Eat With Us?

Every year the Fergy clan gathers to have one large themed progressive dinner. This year the theme was Orange, because we wanted to read the story The Christmas Orange all together. Instead of visiting all 6 Fergy houses this year, we decided to only visit 1/2 the houses and then trade off every other year and so if you didn't host this year you partnered up with someone who did host & made that portion of the meal.  This year I didn't host, since we were moving, so I partnered up with Amber to do appetizer/salads. Amber did a delicious green mandarin orange salad and I did a yummy Orange Sherbet Jell-o.

Next we drove to Charisse's home where mom and her partnered up to make fried rice and orange chicken  This was way yummy and in fact the only thing Phoebe would eat the entire night.

Lastly we wen to Julie's where we had orange rolls and Orange cocoa for dessert. We began the entertainment part of the evening with a lovely dance show by Cami and her cousin Afton.

We then ended with Charisse reading us the story of the Christmas Orange which was the first time I had ever heard it and I really enjoyed it and would like to get it for future Christmas story times.

The change we made to visit only 1/2 houses really made it more enjoyable for us all because we could visit more and fight a lost less to get the kiddos in and out of the cars ever 30 minutes.

Misc. December Moments 2012

Here are a couple shots from throughout the last month:

Sophie LOVES Oreos & Cami now gets in the fridge all by herself ALL the time and I can't get her to stop & if she is given enough time to sneak in the fridge I find her making her own chocolate milk on the floor.

Sophie , like all my other kiddos, could survive on a plain noodle diet. It is heir FAVORITE food which is totally boring if you ask me.

We have to hose down our children after at least one meal on more or less a daily bases, for some reason I guess their mouths are not a large enough target to hit.

This is what my living room may look like if you randomly drop in during the middle of the day. I can't seem to get the kids to not make total disasters wherever they are.

Cami always has had a certain flare for fashion, unfortunately it is not what I would call mainstream fashion.She LOVES to sneak in my bathroom and apply& reapply lip gloss "lippy" daily. She usually cakes it on so much it is drippy and 90% is not actually on her lips.

What's New With Us Fergys???

In the last month there have been a couple big changes in the ole Fergy home. For one, Sophie is not in a crib anymore, but instead a big girl toddler bed. We didn't actually wan to change her yet, but she insisted we do it when one night she learned to climb out of her crib and we then could no longer keep her to stay in her crib. I always dread the non crib change, but Sophie has been really one of the EASIEST babies to change, she just sleeps in hr bed as if nothing has changed and she rarely every falls out. She does love her new found freedom to get n and out of bed and chose where she sleeps, which is as of late on the foot of Phoebe's bed.

The other beg change in out home is Phoebe no longer is a thumb-sucker  We finally got her to kick the habit with a mix of liquid Thum and fancy looking duct tape. It was a process that took a couple weeks  but once she had something to work for she just willed her self to stop almost overnight. She complained that it was a hard thing to be a grownup and not a baby, but she finally did it and so for a reward she got a new Pocahontas doll which she asked for along with the opportunity to stay up an extra 30 minutes and eat homemade ice-cream and with Mom & Dad.

You can see how genially excited she was to get this special date she earned and I am so proud to have my baby Phoebe finally be Thumb free!