Winter Zoo Trip

Since a trip to the zoo would cost my family upwards of $50, we usually just opt to bundle up and attend the zoo on one of the free days during the winter time.  We usually stay nice and toasty in the (stinky) small animal house before venturing outside to see larger animals.  

Alan really liked taking pictures of the tigers

Some kind of lizard or iguana

Meerkat, I think

Jared still loves snakes the best

Bat-eared fox

Green tree python

Giant tortoise

 Of course, we had to do a quick ride on the carousel:

Jared "riding" a snake

The elephants came out at last

The lions were really close to the glass this time!

Christmas!

Lining up to go see what Santa brought!

We had a very full day on Christmas day!  First we opened presents here at our house.  Grandma Curtis came over for a little bit in the morning to give her gifts.  Then we went to Grandma and Grandpa Stout's house and went to church with them.  We also got to talk to Alan's sister Angela on her mission!  Then we had Christmas dinner with the Curtis families at Grandma Curtis' house.  Whew!  What a wonderful day.

Santa brought large gift for each of the kids, plus several small gifts.  Jared got a fun new game (Forbidden Desert) and Maggie and Evelyn got My Little Pony sets.  Santa also brought each of the kids their own themed cereal.  Abby even got some baby rice cereal!  

My Little Pony ice castle

My Little Pony tree house

Abby and her presents from Santa

We ended up getting quite a few new games this Christmas and have enjoyed playing all of them: Forbidden Desert, Skip-bo, R2D2 Bop-It, Five Crowns, Quiddler, and Machi Koro.

Here are some more candid shots of our chaos on Christmas morning:

This is one of those things in which you can make impressions of something.  I love the mess of our living room in the background.

"A paint with water book?"

Christmas Eve 2016

Alan and I finally spent an evening figuring out how to upload photos from our new, fancy camera (well, fancy to us!) on the computer.  So now I need to spend some time catching up from Christmas. Luckily we got it up and running by Christmas Eve.   

Trying out the new camera--beautiful Evelyn

On Christmas Eve we had our traditional nativity with the Curtis cousins.  Since Abby was the right age to play baby Jesus, Jared and Maggie got to play Joseph and Mary.  Evelyn was an angel.  Abby was perfectly reverent during the whole re-enactment.

Evy and Lily

The whole cast--minus a few angels

Love this picture!

Oh, the anticipation!!

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care...