The Dixon Family: December 2014

December was a great month! Early in the month we had our ward Christmas party. This is kind of like "Where's Waldo?" - Where's Jeremiah and Lily? Hint:They're the cutest kids there! :)

Let's take a moment to appreciate this picture. It took us over an hour of waiting in line to get it!

Down the street from us there's a cute little train ride that's free and at Christmas time they set up a whole bunch of light displays and you can ride around and look at all the lights. It's a very fun family outing and we did it a few times :)

And Santa is also there. Thankfully we did not have to wait over an hour for this Santa pic.

So I just took the kids to the dentist last week. And as I'm going through December pictures to update the blog, here we have our last dentist trip! Yes, I'm 6 months behind on updates! haha

Jeremiah played basketball on a team with several of his friends from church and had a great time! This is a poorly taken picture of their team at their awards ceremony.

Cutest baby!!

We have pictures of each of the kids studying with daddy when they're babies. Eternal education . . . :)

For Christmas we went to Las Vegas and grandma Dixon spoiled the kids (as always) and bought Lily this spectacular dress for Christmas Sunday. She's a beauty!

Oooooh James is so cute I just want to squish him! This is one of my favorite pictures of him. His big eyes, chubby cheeks, and baby mohawk caused by double cowlicks. . . and topped off with a vest onesie with a bowtie. It does not get any cuter.

Christmas Sunday family picture.

During our visit, we got to see the Ferres! We went to the park to play, and it ended up being a very windy excursion!

Best friend cousins, Jer and Benj.

Next up on the Christmas activities list was cookie decorating! The kids loved this (of course) and did some lovely decorating, but I think the award for most beautifully decorated cookies definitely goes to Nathalie. She made some so lovely that you almost didn't want to eat them. . . Almost.

Here are two handsome cookie decorating helpers :) No family resemblance, right?

Before we knew it, Christmas Eve was upon us which meant one thing: Christmas Eve bowling!!

The official scoreboard. Austonian is Austin, Dawg is Hayden, Santa Claus is Jeremiah, Tooth Fairy is Nathalie, and Mr. Claus is Dad Dixon. See all those X's on Hayden's score?!

And this scoreboard (names aren't very complicated:) I was happy that I could still break 100, but not happy that I didn't beat Parker. A second game was needed.

Cute boys pic!

Game 2 yielded much more satisfactory results :)

Uncle Austin!

That evening we had our Dixon family party with soup and appetizers and then the Nativity reenactment. Lily was our beautiful Mary, Jeremiah was Joseph and sweet baby James was a happy baby Jesus :) Sam didn't want to participate this year . . .

New Christmas Eve jammies!

And a random picture of cute Jeremiah bowling . . .

Christmas morning!

I have it on good authority that Santa's helpers stayed up until midnight assembling that adorable play kitchen. But it was all worth it to see how excited the kids were about it.

Sam got this awesome sword and shield from grandma!

James was definitely a fan of Christmas. He got lots of new toys, some clothes, and lots of wrapping paper!

The plan was to go to California the day after Christmas, but Christmas night, all the kids got really sick. James was very fussy and would just cry and cry for over an hour which was very unlike him. After a night of little sleep, the kids were still sick, and James was worrying us. We took everybody in to the ER and had them looked at to be sure there were no ear infections. After all this we decided it would be best to just go home and be where the kids' pediatrician is. We were very sad to not get to go to California, but then a couple days later found out that everyone there got the stomach flu. :p Maybe another year!