What a blessing!



While we were in Idaho between Christmas and New Year's, we decided to have our Sissy blessed.  The day of the blessing the Clayson family met at the church for a little get together and then that evening we were joined by the Madsen family for the blessing and a dinner.  It was a great day and we are grateful for all the family that came to support us.

Breeze in her blessing dress from Grandma Madsen.

 



Breeze on her blessing day.

 



The family after Breeze's blessing.  Yes, this is the best picture we could get. 

 



The Clayson Family (or a lot of us)

 



Some of the Clayson grandchildren.  Poor Gracie got stuck trying to contain an ornery Sport. And Colt was entertaining the crowd with his silly antics. 

 



Kazlee, Breeze, Cambree

 



These are three beautiful, sweet babies, but even so, the expression on the girls' faces reminds me of the Disney Cinderella movie when the wicked step-sisters tear up Cinderella's dress.

 



Dinner!

We are so happy to have Breeze in our family.  It has been awesome to see the boys fall in love with their baby sister.  She has us all wrapped around her sweet little finger.

Favorite Sissy moments:
When she wakes up in the morning to eat and buries her face in my neck.
When she lights up at the sight of her brothers.
How she sings and coos herself to sleep at night.

We love you little Sis!  

Christmas 2012

We had such a great Christmas vacation this year.  The boys have been counting down the days until Christmas since well before Thanksgiving and we were all excited to have Dash and Daddy stay home from school for a while.

The boys in the snow.  It takes about 20 minutes of work to get them ready for less than 30 minutes of playing outside.

 



Snow angels by three little devils!

 

You can never have too many sweets in the house at Christmas time so the Sunday before Christmas the boys made a huge mess...I mean, the boys made treats.

Dipping marshmallows in chocolate and sprinkles.

 



It started snowing on Christmas Eve which seemed to actually escalate the boys' level of excitement (I know, who knew that was possible?).  That evening we went with the Booths and the missionaries to do some caroling and drop off treats at a few houses around town and then we came home to have our own little Christmas Eve dinner and track Santa through the Internet.

Our "candlelight" dinner.

 

The boys helped make special Christmas pizzas

 



After dinner, Dash and Colt prepared Santa's treats and they didn't forget the reindeer either.  Dash felt sure that Santa was flying Rudolph that night since he saw a red-nosed reindeer on the Santa tracker screen.  So he asked me to write the following note to put with Santa's cookies and the reindeers' carrots (written verbatim)-
Dear Santa, These carrots are for all your reindeer  If you have extras, then give them to Rudolph.  Love, The Madsens
Then Colt asked me to add the following-
P.S. Take a treat home to a very good elf.
The boys were so excited for Santa that they actually gave themselves anxiety.  Colt worried that he would wake up in the night and then Santa wouldn't stop at our house and Dash worried that he would wake up in the night and hear/see Santa.  I think the idea of running into a stranger in the house, even if it is Santa, kind of creeped him out.  In the end, we got the boys into bed full of excited anticipation.

Christmas Eve after Santa's arrival.  There are all sorts of extra presents under the tree because for the last few weeks leading up to Christmas the boys had been wrapping up different objects from around the house and placing them under the tree.

The boys stayed up late waiting for Santa so they didn't wake up until a very reasonable 7 am.  They loved everything they got, thanked us repeatedly, sang Santa's praises and immediately began playing with everything and eating their treats.  Well, mostly.  Sport got distracted through the present opening process and didn't actually get his final present opened until sometime in the afternoon after his nap. 

Christmas morning.  Santa actually left "snowy footprints" on the carpet that magically don't melt.  The boys were impressed.

 

All the boys playing with the new train set while Sissy rocked in her swing.

All time favorite Christmas moments of 2012-

• Going to visit the widows in the ward
• Singing Christmas carols as a family
• Dropping off neighborhood treats
• Watching Dash wrap up some of his favorite old pjs to give to Colt
• Seeing Colt give Sport his prized stuffed animal
• Listening to the boys retell the Christmas story as found in the Book of Mormon
• Realizing how lucky I am to have the Gospel and the hope the Savior's birth and life bring

 

 

Christmas Cards

Getting out our yearly Christmas cards is always an adventure.  This year it included a printing problem that forced us to have to use the tiny little photocopier type printer at the local grocery store.  Since the result was less than hoped for, I decided to include on the blog some of our posing attempts and our final product.
 

 

 

 

Acting!

Before Christmas, Dash participated in a couple of holiday performances at school.  The first was a little play his kindergarten class did of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  Dash was given one of the Grinch parts and they were looong, but he did awesome!

Dash as the Grinch.  He was the only kid who said his part with the script in hand.  He couldn't really read it, but he recognized enough to help keep himself straight.

 

The final bow.

On the night of the last day of school before Christmas, the K-2nd grade put on a Christmas musical that they had been working on since the first of October.  It was absolutely one of the coolest things I've seen the school do.  The kids were singing, dancing and acting their little hearts out!  Dash was assigned the part of Elf #11, but on the day of the performance another elf was home sick, so he actually ended up with a couple of different parts.  Fortunately, Dash had memorized most of the play by then anyway, so he did great.  Actually, Colt had memorized most of the play also since Dash usually came home from school and taught Colt the lines and songs. 

This is the entire cast and the choir director.  Dash is right in the middle in the Santa hat.

 

This is right before the students all sing "Rap" the Halls.  It was so cute because they all did gangster style dance moves during the verses and then stood like formal choir boys during the chorus.  Actually, you can see a couple of the lead rappers on the top row behind Dash.

 

More choreography.  How cute is the squirrel in the left corner?

 

Dash saying his part.

 

Dash on stage with one of the lead characters...Santa, of course!  When Santa walked on stage, Sport made quite a commotion.  He was pointing and yelling, "Santa! Santa!".  He has pretty low Santa standards. 

It was fun watching Dash during his performances, but we found out that Sport prefers active participant to audience member.  After the K-2nd grade performance, there was a short intermission before the 3rd-5th grade show.  Well, it was getting late, so we packed up and headed into the school lobby to meet Dash and head home.  The front entrance was really crowded and I thought Sport was with Brandan and Brandan thought Sport was with me and well, long story short, Sport was with the 3rd graders heading up on stage.  The principal brought him out to us.  Gosh, we make a name for ourselves.

After the show and Sport's escape.