My Little Baker

Yesterday Elijah and Daddy had their first attempt at making bread. It turned out so well and as you can see, he is pretty proud.

Christmas 2011

I know, I know it's a bit late, ok alot late, but I thought I'd better put some pictures on here just to prove that we did in fact celebrate Christmas this year. 

So we start things off with the standard new P.J's that the Christmas elves bought to our house on Christmas Eve.

Followed by the Mummy and Auntie Sarah's creative gift idea.

We decided to make them all aprons and I have to say they turned out great. The 2 nights of staying up till at least 2am were well worth it.

After Church we headed over to Sarah and Jared's for Christmas dinner. After the lovely food it turned into a bit of a made house. Thanks to the HUGE amounts of gifts sent down by Kathy and John and David and Michelle, I couldn't help but think of the old days of Christmas at Nana's house. Oh I loved those Christmas's when I was little, when it was just so magical. It just isn't the same as an adult when along with the magic, comes a whole lot of stress. But that's the joys of being a parent, when you can sit back and think about how wonderful it was when you were that age. But love the fact that you can sit and watch that amazement on your children's face and know exactly what they are feeling.

The prize for the best reactions when opening the presents definatly go to Marissa, she is a child that you love to give a gift to cause you get this reaction every time.

                

Ellie LOVED her polo neck top

And look at the joy in Elijah's eyes with his Toy Story in Hawaii set.

Papa was thrilled with his Kindle

But not as thrilled as Spencer when he saw that the toys Alyssa had received had had the desired affect and knocked her out.

Phoebe with the new dog Pinky (nothing but original when it comes to naming toys) which hasn't left her side since she opened it.

And Sarah's cake made completely from scratch, decorations and all, defiantly deserves a mention.

It was our first Christmas without Mum and words can't say how much we missed her. But we know she was there and loved every minute ;)

We Love you Mum

Faith's Baptism

On the 2nd of December our daughter Faith turned 8. Now I still think someone came in and skipped a few chapters in our lives without us noticing because there is no way in the world I am old enough to have an 8 year old child.
Well for her birthday, we took the kids out of school at lunch time and we headed up to the Preston Temple for the night as it was our stake temple week. It was a brilliant night, half our ward was there and stayed at the accommodation as well. It was such an amazing family feeling there and we were able to do some games for the kids as a little party for Faith.
So we ended up having her baptism the following weekend on the Sunday afternoon as it was our Stake Conference. She looked beautiful and so grown up. We had ended up borrowing a dress from a friend as the dress I had bought for her to be baptised in, a few months before, was now up to her knees thanks to her growth spurt. Auntie Sarah and Auntie Julie talked and Ayesha and Ellie said the prayers. Daddy did the baptism with Papa and Grandad as the witnesses. We had a lot of people travel so ended up with quite a few people in the Circle. Daddy, Papa, Grandad, Uncle Jared, Andrew, Simon, Brendan, John-John and Aaron. Other Uncle Jared was at work, but it was lovely to have Aaron in the circle as he had just been given the Melchizedek Priesthood that morning at Stake conference. (Sorry for this being so detailed but the pictures I took on the day didn't come out very well for some reason.)
We had a lot of lovely food to eat after and it was a really lovely way to kick start the Christmas season, with everyone gathered together.

Can someone please tell me how she went from this.......

to this.......

In the blink of an eye.

We Love you Faithy Lu 

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