After Thanksgiving, Nathan took some fun family pictures for us. Here are my favorites. (You'll recognize some from our Christmas card!)

Merry Christmas! Ready or not, Christmas came to the Jones home. Beside last minute wrapping, we actually got to bed at a pretty decent hour. Robert was unhappy with Ethan's latest stance on Santa and so he set up an elaborate ruse to win him back to the land of magic. As soon as the kids woke up they tumbled into our bedroom, begging to go downstairs. As they crowded by our bed, Robert pressed a preprogrammed button on his phone. Suddenly, from down in the living room, a booming, jolly voice thundered, "Merry Christmas! HO! HO! HO!" and just for good measure, the button was pressed again and the jolly voice repeated itself. The kids went dead silent.

 We all stared at each other until Alaina whispered, "It's Santa!" Pushing past each other they scrambled downstairs to catch the sneaky fella, but Santa was too tricky. Even though the kids observed that the sound came from the opposite side of the house than the Christmas tree and stockings, they quickly explained it away by saying Santa came down one chimney and up the other. I guess even Santa needs to shake things up sometimes. Regarldless of the unconventional exit, all the kids chatted happily about nearly catching Santa. (Alaina was extra concerned for the other kids, since Santa was apparently running behind schedule. That is, until reconverted albeit skeptical Ethan deduces that we were probably Santa's very lsat stop. Lucky us. In a bit of a awe-struck stupor, the kiddies wandered back to the Christmas tree. Only the sight of presents was able to break the Santa spell and the kiddies gleefully jumped into delight of opening gifts. Yeah for Christmas!

check out Alaina's face in this one.  She was really surprised.  ;)

Daddy helping Jason open his presents.

Wild and crazy presents for Rob - Socks.  (hey, he really, really needed them.)

I got yarn.  I decided to teach myself to crochet.  We'll see how that goes.

Mom and Dad Jones sent this awesome Tetherball set that we played with, in the house.  We have since set it up properly outside, where it still gets lots of use in the chilly weather.

The tetherball made Jason laugh and laugh.  I only started filming him on the tail end of his hysterics...so he was already calming down.  He is such a sweet boy.

The flying turtles were a big hit for the kids.  Jason loves getting rides.

Even Bella was allowed in for the Big day.  See that tiny bone we got her?

My parents came down right after Christmas for a few days, so we spent our time eating and doing puzzles.  Best way to spend the holiday.  Lora and her family came up for a couple of days too, and then followed Mom and Dad back up to Utah to visit them.

Here is everyone on a walk.

Isn't this a great picture of Dad?

Baby, it's cold out there...

Silly me, I didn't really get any good pictures of Lora and the crew, but here is a funny pic of Little Naomi getting ready to catch her Daddy, Mark.  

Colorful twins.

Mom and Laina watching Little Women.  I love watching Laina, watching movies.  She always gets so into the story.

Hoover Dam

After we dropped by St. Jude's Ranch, we were only about 10 more minutes away from Hoover Dam.  We decided that it would be a great time to go and walk across it.  We had tried to go once with Mom and Dad Jones, but during any holiday, it seems like the whole world has the same idea.  Traffic up to the Dam was like a parking lot and so the trek was abandoned.  That Sunday, however, was just a normal, everyday Sunday.  There wasn't any traffic there.  The only problem was that we were dressed for church, and not for a chilly walk across the Dam.  Everyone that we saw there must have thought we were crazy.  They were all bundled up in their big winter snow coats and hats and there we were in our breezy little outfits.  Alaina luckily found a jacket she had left in the car and Robert had his suit jacket (although, the boys commandeered that pretty quickly.  That meant that Rob and I had to brave it.  Well.  We're tough.  (I still thought the snow jackets were a little over-kill.  I mean.  There's no snow, people!  The sun's out!  A sweatshirt, sure.  Maybe a light jacket.  But it looked like we were in Alaska the way people were dressed.)  Anyhoo.  It was fun.  We all enjoyed seeing just how massive that Dam is.  The water level is super low now, but hopefully that picks up again sometime soon.  Here are the pics.

December Activities.

This month has flown by, we've been so merrily busy.  

We were able to celebrate Rob and Tonnette's Birthday.

We had a Christmas Choir performance from Ethan's choir.  He has been working so hard all year for this event, and it was wonderful to watch him sing.  Nathan, Lindi and the kids came to watch with us.  

Austin won an award for Kindness that was presented to him at an assembly in front of the school.  It was a perfect award for him, I think.

We didn't realize it, but when we went to watch Austin get his award, Jason and I were all matchy, matchy.  Doesn't this look like a good mug shot of the two of us?

This Christmas season I wanted the kids to become a little more focused on becoming Christ-like and a little less concerned with the pile of gifts under the tree.  I thought that by finding some ways to volunteer would help us with that goal.

Yes.  It was a nice idea.  However,  have you ever tried to find places that a kid can volunteer?  They are hard to find.  Every place sets a limit for an average of 12 years.  I get it.  Most places you can volunteer could be a little confusing or even dangerous for little ones.  Fortunately, with a lot of patience and a few extra hours on-line, I was finally able to find good things for the kids to do.

The first  place we went was to a small warehouse in Las Vegas.  Here, with the doors wide open, you could smell the sweet scent of freshly cut wood.  Toys 4 Smiles is a group of volunteers that cut out wooden car toys and give them to almost every charity out there.  Battered women, shelters, hospitals, homeless and family's of veterans.  I think they even send a small percentage overseas for soldiers to hand out to less fortunate locals in the countries where they are serving.  The toys are well made and what made this such a great place to volunteer is that the kids were able to test the cars to check for quality and then oil them to make them look nice.  We got through a couple huge boxes in about 3 hours.  The kids had a wonderful attitude while they worked and we had a good talk about the kids that those toys could actually go to.  What made it extra sweet was that the volunteers that ran the place let each of the kids take one car home to keep.  So nice.

We also made a bunch of cookies to give to the families staying at the McDonald House in Vegas.  This is a home that is dedicated to the families of children who have severe medical conditions the require extended stays at the Children Hospital.  These families stay, free of charge, for the entire duration of their child's inpatient care.  The time period can be anywhere from a couple of weeks to over a year.

The McDonald House also provides sack lunches for the families so that they don't have to leave the hospital to get food every day.  They gave each of the kids 10 sacks to decorate.  It isn't a very important job, but it made the kids feel good to know that they might brighten up someone's day with a cheerful lunch bag.  During such a stressful time that these families have to worry and watch their child go through so much, maybe a little cheerful moment isn't such a small job, after all.

The last place we volunteered was at St. Jude's Ranch for foster children.  Here, instead of having the kids go from foster home to foster home, they provide (on 40 acres of donated land up in Boulder City) a bunch of actual homes where the kids can stay as long as they are in the system.  The Ranch tries really hard to especially keep large family groups together who would otherwise be separated from each other in individual homes.  In each home about 5-8 kids stay and they become a small family unit.  The Ranch also provides food, special classes and therapy.  And instead of kicking the kids out as soon as they turn 18, I believe they let them stay on until they are around 25.  That is pretty amazing.

So.  Or kids got the list of all the kids living there along with a need/want/wish list that they had for Santa.  Each of them picked a child out and we went to the store and got them a few presents.  Each of our kids also donated 5 dollars of their chore money to help buy the presents.  Robert and I got a few more things that some of the young girls who had babies could use, like bottles and diapers.  After we got our presents together, we drove up to Boulder City and dropped them off.  The kids really wanted to meet the children that they got presents for, but these presents were going to be from Santa, so it would ruin some of the magic if they knew who they really came from.  Here are the kids after we dropped everything off.  

Overall, it was a wonderful way to get into the Christmas Spirit.  I always want our kids to know that there is an entire world outside of our home that struggles in ways that they don't have to.   One day everyone always manages to find themselves in a place of need.  You hope and pray it never happens, but it does.  And it will for them just like it has for the rest of us.  There have been many times that I have had to humble myself enough to reach out and ask for help.  It builds the human spirit to be able to be on both sides of that equation.  Give when you have...ask when you need.

There were a few more ideas I had, but we ran out of time to do them all.  I'll just have to save them in my bag of tricks for next year.