Christmas Eve

Our Christmas Eve is our biggest celebration. After the gifts are open Christmas day the grown ups go numb and become walking zombies. But Christmas Eve is our big, fun for me tradition. We eat soup, usually beef stew that takes 4 hours to prepare and is worth it. The meat is so tender, the gravy thick. Mmmm....

After dinner and dessert (which now goes on for days...) then we gather for the Nativity. Some of our reenactments have boardered on irreverent in the past, get the Godwin boys and my baby brother together and the laughs just flow. Now that the kids are older, and there are more, they play the parts and we insist on seriousness. I want my kids to grow up seeing the beauty and wonder in the story, not how funny Herod looked in his crown, or the shepards falling on the ground in great fear. Lauging.

We sing some songs, read some stories about how giving is better than recieving ended with "The Polar Express" book, then they are shipped off to bed. Then the adults are up till 2 AM wrapping all the gifts because we can never seem to get it done before hand..... I sleep in until I have the house pounding down on me. We have breakfast, a full breakfast, before one bow is undone... This drives the kids wild, but gift unwrapping can take hours and so the adults want to be prepared for the long haul. The rest of the day is cooking on big meal and then eating it as left overs for days. January comes and I'm ready to fast for the month.

Christmas Eve morning the kids try to keep themselves occupied.

Chris and Liz chose cards...


Asami making her first Pie...

Will ate up a lot of apples worths of skins that were being pealed for apple pie.

Here he is testing the length...

Our dessert buffet table.

This is the downstairs tree. We get two every year, one for the living room and one upstairs for the family room.

Both Liz and Essie wanted to be Mary, and so in the true spirit of Christmas, they both got to be her. So hereare our two Mary's headed to Bethlehem on the back of Malachi the donkey.

Eli was Joseph, he kinda got told he had to do it.

Thirteen year olds are so moody!

Tayla was the Angel. She was so sweet and really enjoyed her part.

Here is the angel telling the shepards about the wonderous event that has taken place. (Shepards- Cris, Amee, and Reston.)

They rushed to the manger to see the babe (Logan) wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. (I think the binkie adds to the scene...what about you?)

A tradition, that annoys Bob to no end, is actually new. We allow the kids to open one gift on Christmas Eve. I loved it when we were kids because Grandma would give us pajamas and that was the gift we would open. Even though every year you knew it was a nightgown I always looked forward to it. My mom has not the funds to get that many for soooo many grandkids. So our kids usually pick out something for each other. This is Essie and Tay opening one...

Our audience for the Nativity...

Joy reading a story about how this little boy wants everything and his list to Santa gets to long to mail and so he has to rewrite it. Kids are suppose to walk away with a renewed desire to ask for less... D0es it usually work? Probably not.

The kids are asleep, the gifts are wrapped and placed with care under the tree, the grownups are exhausted and wishing there was a Santa to do this job so that they could go to bed at a desent hour. It is 1 AM and were going to bed.....

Good Night.

Merry Christmas to All.

After the adoption we took a family vacation, yes we actually took out kids out of the valley! We went to SL and stayed two nights at a hotel that fit our whole family! One suite with two rooms. The kids loved the pool, we are raising fish... We went to Temple square and saw the lights, they mildly enjoyed it. We ate out at nice places and their manners were a considerable amount over passable, I was proud of them. We stayed up late flipping channels (it was like vegetarians at a meat buffet) we have no cable T.V. so we were junkies getting a year supply fix. It was a great time! It will become our annual tradition to go and stay in a hotel, oh and one with a pool and elevator, those being the highlights...


The pool should have been IN the room, the kids would have been soooo happy....

The first night that we got there the pool was cool, but the hot tub was a very nice hot/warm. The next morning the hot tub was cool and the pool was freezing. The kids swam anyway, nothing could dampen their swimming spirit... They used the hot tub for a small pool. The girls danced and the boys searched for a bottle cap that they found on the bottom of the pool..


We couldn't send the kids to the pool alone so we had to entertain ourselves. We didn't get back in after the first night. That was enough swimming to last us a year... Scott's checking out the news on his lap-top.

Elijah playing with Tayla and then they danced...

Esther convinced Malachi to dance with her...

The traditional photo at temple square. The family may have been a little exasperated with me, I kept stopping to take photos for other families, so they could all be in the picture; camera's are not created equal....

O.K. no one cares about my Temple photos, but I'm a photographer, I just can't help myself, I think they are lovely.... look at that lens! I love it... How did I ever live before digital?...

Now any really good photographer will tell you they never make mistakes, which is true... but sometimes something wonderful can occur in a image that may usually be discarded. I have been on a natural, no flash, kick lately, I love the dimension that it adds to a image, and a softness...warm and fuzzy. My camera can take beautiful images in very low light situations. It is amazing! This image in any other moment may have been deleted because of being too much on the fuzzy side, but I got lucky and have a visually stimulating image. Now I will concede to the 'eye of the beholder' thing, so it may not make you go ahhh, but that is the amazing thing about people, we are all so different. But I do hope one or two people will find the unique feel and love this image also....

Malachi was cold and the most unimpressed by the whole light experience. He was whinny and complaining so Eli, being the great guy that he is gave him a lift...

We have even numbers!!! The girls and the guys....We had a great trip and came home to the holidays and family, my brother and his family came from Washington, I was on the phone every few hours to check on their progress, I inherited the worry gene from my grandma. The weather was not the best and I wanted to make sure they made it safe. It was great to see them again...

Sorry I have been so long, but family comes first and my life is so busy that I took the last three weeks off of everything that I could. We adopted Tayla, what a wonderful day, we opted to do it all in one day (the adoption and sealing) My first time being part of court preceding. And definitely good that it was for a good thing!! The family who adopted Tayla biological brother were there at the same time. Tayla was so happy to see him. She wanted to sit by him.

I was so excited to be in the Temple with all my children, the sealer let them stand right up next to the alter. I looked at them, you know a mom wanting a moment looking into the eyes of her children and share a "moment" but they all three looked a little dazed with a sense of "What the heck is this all about." Then the moment of Ah-ha hit me and I have a great example to carry with me always why we have to be prepared and mature enough to appreciate and be ready to accept so many commitments. They were too young to understand and fully comprehend the magnitude of blessings that we receive by keeping the commandments of God. But someday they will. Elijah will have a vivid memory, the rest a passing almost fleeting glimpse. But if I do my job right, and I pray I do, someday they will be ready to go and make those commitments for themselves. They are growing, and our family is changing and learning. I look forward to the coming years and all the new lessons that we will all learn.

For now I will hold the memory close, our family feels a little more complete...

Charles and his new family...

Tayla and Charles with the judge, how often do you get to do that!

Sitting in the Judge's seat... now where is that gavel...

Our Family with the man who made our family possible. That does put a lot of perspective on things doesn't it. Someone else making choices for you...

Tayla and Charles with their now extinct "case-worker", Yea! no more visits, our life is ours and we feel a little more free... I did wonder if having it "official" would make a difference and surprisingly and happily, YES! It does feel final and official and this shadow over us is gone. What a great feeling!!!

Both families, just the way our lives will be from now on, a little intertwined...

These two are taken outside the Temple that night. We were cold, but I just couldn't let the moment go with out marking it in time...

We chose Ruth to be her middle name for a lot of reasons, the obvious being that we have a Elijah, Malachi, and Esther. So of course we wanted her to fit the mold. But she already came with a great name and she knew it and loved it and felt comfortable in it. Also she was not always mine. The first 3 years of her life are a mystery to me. I want to honor the parents who gave her life and offered her all that they could. With all their faults that made going home impossible, I know that they love her. Her life she owes to them. Her face and mannerisms, her body shape(!) belong to them. I want her to eventually choose for herself how much of her life she wishes to share with them. But a debt of gratitude I owe them for having the courage to give her to me.

So all that long spiel on her first name; The reason I chose Ruth (it's not the prettiest bible name) is the story of Ruth and how she was willing to leave all she knew behind and go with Naomi to her home. The bible gives, in my opinion, one of the most poignant declaration when she simply states "whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me." Ruth 1:16-17

A lot of people have made choices for her in her short life, choices that effect her for eternity and she had no power to say what she wanted. We have prayed for her and I feel that she is the answer to that prayer, that she was destined to be a part of our family. I want for her to feel that also, just as Ruth in olden times felt it. That she would someday say the same thing for herself...

ADOPTION DAY!

Introducing

Tayla Ruth Atkinson

adopted

December 18, 2008

and sealed to our family in the

Logan Utah Temple