Wednesday, December 30, 2015

He's 7!

December 29th our Crazy Caleb turned 7. He is always so excited for his birthday. It's pretty hard to wait all year to the very end of December. Haha! We got up and picked up his Texas doughnut. Somehow that became a tradition around here.



He chose to go to the new Star Wars movie for his birthday, so we spent the day in Provo shopping and watching the movie. He wanted spaghetti for his birthday dinner.


 Then it was finally present time! We Facetimed Grandma and Grandpa Balch so they could watch him open his presents from them. They gave him 2 snowball shooters and a super soft BYU blanket. He sure loves that thing. He sleeps with it every night. It's been good to break him of the raggedy old baby blanket he loves so much.


 After that my dad and Suzanne came over for the rest of the presents. He got a scooter and the alarm clock he has been begging for. He really wanted an alarm to wake him up in the mornings, the problem is, he sleeps right through the dang thing. It hasn't actually woken him up even once. I finally shut it off. He does like checking the time on it though.




Card and money from the Carliles

 He chose a Texas Sheet cake with baseball players on it, and blew out all his candles on the first try.


 This kid is awesome and we sure love him. Our house would be way too quiet without him around. We love you, Caleb!

Sunday, December 27, 2015

My Boys

My boys have decided that they love real tie on ties. Charles has been working a lot with Jacob on learning how to tie them, but Caleb hasn't really learned. Charles is gone a lot on Sunday mornings and today I caught Jacob helping Caleb with the new tie he got for Christmas. I absolutely love these pictures.


 It's good to have a brother.


Saturday, December 26, 2015

Christmas Day 2015

Christmas morning we were up at 6:00 and excited to see what Santa had brought for us. Dad went down first to take a few pictures before the chaos began. Santa leaves all of our presents by our stockings, and we put our family gifts under the tree.







 The kids ran down the stairs youngest to oldest.

 The boys found their bows and arrows first.



And Brielle's wish came true when she opened her new phone.



The boys big gift was a race track that they can run with their phones, iPods or iPads.

 Brooke was a little harder this year because she really didn't have that one thing she wanted. She was excited about her Legos and art supplies though.

Light Sabers for all the boys.


 Charles and I scored with new Beats.


The kids got these cute personalized M&Ms.


Once our Santa gifts had all been ripped through we took a minute to play before moving on.


Then it was time for my very most favorite part of Christmas morning. The family gifts. My kids love love love picking out things for each other and for us. They really truly are more excited to give the things they picked out than opening gifts themselves. Especially the things they picked out for dad.

Jacob gave Caleb some Nerf accessories.

A high five for dad's new Broncos license plate holder.


A new Broncos football.




Some new GoPro stuff from Brooke.

Things started to wind down. We still had one big present for each kid, and there was one from Brielle to Charles, and one from Jacob to me. Charles and I argued about who got to go last. I swore Brielle's was the best, he felt that way about Jacob's. So I gave in and he opened his from Brielle first. She had made him a new BBQ apron completely by herself. She did such a great job!



Then it was my turn. Jacob had made the decision to sell his "iPod", which was Charles' old iPhone, in order the get a credit to put towards a new rose gold iPhone 6s for me. What an awesome kid! Apparently it was pretty tough on him. Tears and all, but he really wanted to do it. I sure love that kid. And he lucked out and got my old phone, which is newer than his old one anyway.

When everything else was open, we cleared the floor and finally gave the kids the presents we had been dying to give them! We had been keeping this secret from them since April. Ahhh!!!


 We gave each kid a new suitcase and inside, right on the top was the note telling them we were headed to Costa Rica!


The suitcases were also full of presents; summer clothes, new swimsuits, Bose headphones, camelbak backpacks, toys for the plane, and even some Bronco's gear. They were pretty dang excited.

Star Wars magnets

Headphones.

More headphones.




It was a super awesome Christmas morning. I was sad it was over, but now we had a fun vacation to look forward to!

After presents we had breakfast, picked up the house a little, and played with our new toys. Grandma and Grandpa Balch came up and we had a very nice prime rib dinner. Then we watched a movie and played with the new race track. That thing is pretty dang cool.



Christmas is by far my very favorite holiday. Can't wait until next year!!