Merry Christmas to All!

I hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas! I know we sure did! I love this time of year to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior! I am so thankful for Him and all that He did for mankind! What a remarkable man! I am also thankful for my wonderful husband! I'm so glad that he got to be home with us this year instead of halfway across the world sleeping in the dirt. I love him so much! He is one of my greatest blessings and I'm so lucky to have him! I am also thankful for Skyli! She brings such a joy into our home! I love how she made Christmas come back to life! She brought the Christmas magic back into our home! I am also thankful for such wonderful family and friends! You guys are the things that make our life so wonderful! Here's a look at what our day was like!

Santa Clause SPOILED Skyli! She must have been a very very good girl this year! Look at all those presents!

Here are the cookies, carrots, milk and water that Skyli left for Santa and his reindeer. He ate the cookie and the reindeer ate the carrots and they drank their drinks. Santa even left Skyli a note. :)

I love this! Skyli had just woke up and was coming downstairs to see if Santa has come yet. When we put together her 4 wheeler we didn't know that the battery had to charge for 18 hours so it was charging and it didn't work that morning. Santa left her a card explaining it to her though. (That's what Zach is reading to her at the end)

This is the present she has been asking for, a Rapunzel barbie.

Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Anderson for the bike helmet.....

a really big thank you for the bicycle horn that she kept honking and honking and honking and honking and honking and honking and honking! It was so loud that she would put one hand over her ear while she honked the horn. This will come in handy when the single students next door keep us up all night again.....revenge is sweet!

This is a tradition that has been around for a long time in Zach's family so we decided to carry it on over onto our family. After everyone opened their presents we pile up the wrapping paper on top of someone then they bust out of it. Sky loved doing it!

This was one of the favorites for Sky. It's a tunnel that leads into a small tent. She also loved the dress up trunk from Grandma Rasmussen. (Thanks mom!) She switched dress up outfits every 15 minutes.

Look how cute she is!

We got invited to our friends house today to hang out with them. We had such a blast with them! Thanks Lambeths! Skyli didn't get to ride her 4 wheeler until late tonight because of the battery. It was snowing outside but we had to let her drive it around for awhile. She is learning how to drive, but hasn't quite learned yet.

She was so happy and had so much fun on her little quad! I hope tomorrow she gets to ride it more, but it's supposed to snow a lot. We're under a winter weather advisory warning here. We're supposed to get 2-3" of snow. They have even canceled church tomorrow. :) Anyway, hope you've all had a great Christmas!

HO HO HO MERRY CHRISTMAS!

On Wednesday we had to make a trip to Roanoke which is about 45 minutes away so we took Skyli to see Santa at the mall. She LOVES Santa! She talked his ear off and didn't want to leave his lap. She showed him her Belle doll, told him how old she is, asked about the reindeer, and tons of other stuff. I was a bit upset though because they wouldn't let me in the fence to take pictures. They said I had to stay out because a photography company was charging to take pictures. The cheapest was $20 for 2 5x7's. Are they serious?! What a rip off!!! That was lame! Skyli enjoyed her Santa Clause though! Oh, funny Skyli story, when we were walking into the mall, Skyli said, "I'm going to go see Santa Clause! Santa Clause is BIG! He's going to bring me lots and lots of presents! He's gonna need a GREAT BIG truck to bring all of my presents!" I told her, "Santa doesn't have a truck. He has a sleigh that's pulled by reindeer." Sky said, "Oooohhhhh. I want to see the reindeer! I want to see Rudolph!" haha She's too funny! She's super excited for Christmas and so are we! 2 more days! Can't wait!! Here are all of the pictures I took of Skyli and Santa.

"My name is Skyli. I want a barbie and a bear."

"I'm 3!"

"This is my Belle. I'm a Princess! Where's your reindeer? How are you reindeer? Where's Rudolph?"


They had a train that went around Santa and of course, Skyli HAD to ride it. I love having her as my daughter! She is so much fun! She is such a sweetheart! I love my little girl! I also love that she asks to see Santa everyday now.

Our Adventures in Washington DC Part 2

This is what we saw when we came out of the museum. It looked gorgeous! I know you can't really tell from the picture because I had to take it from my phone and I had to hurry because we had cross the street, but it was really pretty. I promise! :)

This, my friends, is the National Christmas Tree! Awesome isn't it? It was so bright! There was a couple of villages and trains around the bottom of it. It is really tall! Oh and the white building on the left side of the picture is the White House.

Us infront of the tree. You can't really see us because, once again, these pictures were taken from my phone, not my camera.

Each state had a decorated Christmas tree. This one is Utah's.

This one is Virginia's.

They had a little wooden house where Mrs. Clause and Santa Clause were. This is Sky with Mrs. Clause. She was more afraid of her than of Santa. They took a picture of Sky with Santa for free, but I need to get on the website and find it.

Well, that wraps up our trip to DC. After Santa Clause we came home. It was such a fun day! I enjoyed spending the day with my 2 favorite people! I love my family!

Our Adventure in Washington DC

We decided to go check out Washington DC on Tuesday. It was a lot of fun! It's only a 2 1/2 hour drive from where we live.

Our first stop was Arlington. I LOVE going to Arlington! It is so beautiful! It was especially beautiful with all of the wreaths on the graves. There are SO many graves there! It just goes on as far as you can see. Because there are so many graves the sponsors who pay for the wreaths choose a different section of the cemetery every year to place the wreaths on. The families are welcome to place wreaths on the graves if they choose too.

Here is where all of the generals are burried. As you can see there are four star generals burried there.


We saw this as we were walking out. It's a memorial for the armed forces.

Here is a closer look at it. It's really pretty!

After Arlington we decided to go to one of the Smithsonian's and it just so happened to be the American History museum which was closest to us. As we got out of the truck we saw the sun setting next to the Washington Monument. I thought it looked really pretty.

This is what we saw at the museum:

This is the old Washington monument. It used to be where the other Washinton monument is.

I thought this was funny. I love how it "glows in the dark".

Who doesn't love the Muppets? These were the original ones used by Jim Henson. Notice how much Kermit the Frog changed over the years.



"There's no place like home! There's no place like home!" Dorothy's ruby slippers. They are the ones she wore in the movie.

This was my favorite part! We got to see the flag that was hanging over Fort McHenry the night Francis Scott Key wrote The Star Spangled Banner. It was AWESOME! It had wholes in it from being shelled and everything. It was HUGE! It was around 20 feet tall! I never imagined that it was that big! It was in a dark room so you couldn't take pictures. It was awesome! By far my favorite part!

This showed the evolving of trains.

Skyli's kitty came everywhere with us! She didn't put it down.

This is a kevlar that a journalist wore during the invasion in Iraq. Notice it's a Marine kevlar. OORAH!




Dale Ernhardt's helmet and his managers jacket.




The original costume of C-3PO.

That was where my camera died. So the end of our Washington trip will come in another post. I took some pictures with my phone.

Preschool Program

On Monday Skyli had a Preschool program with all the kids in her preschool. It was so funny! The kids were so cute and had a BLAST playing with each other! They each had a part to say. I got Sky saying her part on video, but you can't hear her say it at all. Then they sang Jingle Bells and Away in a Manger. Sky did such a good job! She just loves all of the kids in her class!


Haha I love Sky's face in this picture! Grayson (the kid sitting next to her on his moms lap) didn't want to sing or listen to everyone singing. It was funny! These kids are the ones in Sky's class. The rest are in different classes.


Sky's sitting by one of her favorite preschool friends Analee. I love both of their faces in this picture!


"Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way..."

I tried to get all the letters. It was too cute and funny how they were never all showing at the same time. :)

This video is of Skyli saying her part. She says, "R is for red and green. Colors that represent the season."

This video is of away in a manger. Sky doesn't know all of the words, but she's trying so hard to sing.

Night of Miracles

Last week we went to a live nativity scene called Night of Miracles with our amazing neighbors, Justin and Vanessa. It was actually really cool! They took us into a tent and gave us a gold coin because we were traveling to Bethlehem to pay taxes. They had a village set up that looked real. They had sheperds and sheep in the distance. There was a part where angels came to sing to the sheperds. They had a real HUGE camel wandering around too. It was awesome, but brought back scary memories to Zach of the time in Afghanistan when he tried to ride a camel and was almost attacked by a camel. Needless to say we didn't get too close to the camel. They had a llama and Roman soliders who collected our tax money. Zach gave his to a blind man who was begging for money however. What an amazing man! ;) haha then we watched Mary and Joseph ride in on a donkey and all of the nativity come to life. It was really fun! It was a great reminder of what Christmas is all about. Sky LOVED watching it too. She kept pointing to baby Jesus and saying, "Momma, is that baby Jesus? Oh so cute!" I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas season and remember what Christmas is really about.

The light behind the angel represents that star and you could see it from miles away.

Merry Christmas!

Family Pictures

We had our family pictures taken today. I loved the look of all the snow on the ground. It looks beautiful outside right now! I asked one of our friends to come take our pictures for us and she did an awesome job!! I love them all! Here are some of my favorite. Now I need to decide which one to print off for our new family picture. Which one do you think is the best because I'm going to need some help choosing? I haven't edited these yet so keep that in mind. I'll try to get some edited and post some more later. Thanks Tabitha for your time taking our pictures today! You are awesome!

Skyli is GORGEOUS!! I love this picture of her!

Armed and ready!

Snowball fight!!!

I LOVE my hot hubby!

I LOVE my daughter!

I love this one! She's so cute!