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First off, Merry Christmas!

December was so super busy, a little overwhelming at times, but tons of fun. I have a lot of catching up to do, so brace yourself.

So I've been crazy busy with helping the office with our holiday advertising and also getting together signage for around the office. Instead of having picture frames up EVERYWHERE we're getting digital frames and having all the signage uploaded. Super easy for me to change with seasons, events, specials, etc... I'm happy about that.

One particular Wednesday in December I was helping out some family and friends and we ended up with 5 boys, yes 5! under the age of 3 here at the house. They were so much fun. I'm grateful though that we don't have 5 children under 3. Greater found respect for Jon and Kate plus 8!

December is full of traditions and one that I wanted to start up with us is Ice Skating. It just so happened one morning that the TODAY show was on and Meredith was on the rink in NY. Benson asked if we could go. I thought, well its Friday and we actually don't have ANYTHING planned so we could go that night. Well on the way down to Sacramento Benson said his tummy hurt..he'd had problems going to the bathroom for a little while now, so we thought that was the deal. Before heading into Downtown Sacramento we stopped at Panda Express for dinner......as we walked in Benson let out a yelp and.....throw up shot all over me and Max. The people in the restaurant were disgusted...rightfully so, but it's not like he'd been laying down ill all day. We left and went back home. And that was the end of Benson's sickness...we have no idea what it was. Max got sick 3 times that evening and the next day all was well!!!

Round Two: again, we headed for Sacramento to ice skate. Benson was very excited. The rink was little small and the boys a little young. But Benson loved it. Max didn't because he wanted to do it "by self" and he kept falling, which he hated.

Tis' the season for Christmas Cards....I had around 15 card designs and family photo sessions to do during December. Doesn't seem like much but that was on top of every night we had something going for Young Womens/Young Mens, Family get-together, ward or work or friend Christmas party, plus school parties, friends birthday parties, etc....it was a lot. I love photography though. Here are a couple things I did.

Service is the best and we had a great opportunity to help the BELIEVE campaign with Macy's and Make a Wish Foundation. We delivered over 800 letters...just shy of our goal. I was impressed that we got so many. We had a party at our house one night, our Stake Youth Dance participated, Manzanita School, Wilson School (K-3) and Benson's Preschool. The kids loved putting the letters into the mailbox.

For the parties we had around our community, Justin and I made a mailbox so the kids could feel they were sending the letters to Santa in a special way. They loved it.

Christmas Eve is always crazy. We had a little scare on the 23rd. Late in the evening we got a call from Ann telling us that Tanner had had a seizure at Afton's house in Sacramento and was rushed to the hospital. This seizure was not as bad as last time, 3 years ago when it happened at our house. His breathing didn't stop this time and when Amy administered the shot his body relaxed and he was responsive. It was quite the scare but he was okay and released on Christmas Eve early afternoon. The doctors and we all think it had to do with the new hearing aid he has been given to help his brain filter noises.

So, Christmas eve we were unsure of our activities but they carried on as usual and we all anticipated Tanner's arrival later that day.

We started out by delivering the letters to Macy's, then we headed to John's Incredible Pizza for a couple hours. Later that evening we met at the Young's for our gift exchange and then headed back to Biggs for Jordan's phone call at 8:30.

It was a eventful day...

Christmas morning was wonderful. We should have stopped after the stockings and Santa gifts. The boys took forever to open gifts. And between calling parents and webcamming our morning for them and the visit from Grandma and Grandpa Tolman it was almost 11am before we were done. 3 hours of gift opening..it's not like we had that much stuff...it just took forever! Then we headed to Ann and Johns for Christmas Dinner and a very relaxed Christmas Day.

(One of our traditions is Gingerbread house building for FHE which accrued 2 weeks prior to Christmas)

(No pics from New Year's Eve, but it was pretty lax and not too exciting...just family time, playing the Wii and eating, a lot.)

A New Year's tradition that we began a couple of years ago was to go bowling on New Year's Day. There are hardly any people there and the kids always look forward to it. Later that afternoon we met up at John and Ann's for Dinner.

Well, now that I am all caught up....thanks to the complaints of many....I'll be better at keeping up-to-date.

Happy New Year!!!