Good Bye 2011

2011 was quite an eventful year for the Hammer family.  The main event was sending Coelton to the mission field to get him back 5 months later.  He survived a terrible fall and to that I am truly grateful.  He went through a lot and came out a champ.  We're so proud of him and the choices he has made. 

We went to Idaho Falls for New Years.  We had our family Christmas parties at that time also.  We went to Shelley and had a party at the church house.  We did a Service project for the Antepartum Dept. at St. Lukes.  Jason and Stephanie were in charge and we donated several baby items and we also took some Christmas cheer to the Mother's who were in the hospital over christmas. 
We had a dinner and white elephant gift exchange along with a little talent show.  We played Whoopee!  Caden went Skiing with Jace and Cade to Targhee. 

The Judy's went roller skating at Star Light Skating Rink.  We had  a great time.  Coelton couldn't skate, but he enjoyed watching everyone.  We went to Dad's and had pizza and opened family gifts.  It was a nice time.  Being New Year's Eve, we played our new game Telestrations with everyone and talked about our cruise we are all going to go on in 2013.  We went back to Rhett's and rang in the New Year with the kids who had allready gone back to Rhett's. 

We stayed at Rhett and Claudine's place.  They have an extra room which is great for us.  They are always so gracious in letting us stay all the time.  We were able to go to the temple with Coelton and Nate the first night we got there.  That was neat to see these 2 missionary cousins have that experience together.  Coelton had never done a session in the Idaho Falls temple.  With our temple closed, we have to try and get to one whenever we are near one. 

We look forward to 2012 and making dreams come true and creating awesome memories. 

Grandpa's Moose Blanket.

All in Braces!

New Ties from Grandpa!

First Picture of the New Year!

 

Christmas

Christmas came and went so fast this year!  We had a great one, but I didn't take a lot of pictures.  I find the older I get the less pictures I take.  I forget the camera a lot and I am too lazy to get off my fat butt and grab the camera to capture that perfect moment. 
It was great having Coelton home with us.  We weren't sure if he would be with us or not.  His Doctor decided he would release him after the new year. 
Grandma and Grandpa Hammer were with us this year.  That was different for us, but was very nice to share our traditions and Christmas with them.  The kids were very quiet and there wasn't much arguing or fighting with Grandma nd Grandpa in the house.  Joel even was on his best behavior.  ; )
Christmas was on a Sunday this year.  We slept until I think 6:30 or 7.  We all came out together to see what Santa had left.  Then we jumped in our church clothes to make it to church by 9am.  Hailey and I sang in the choir.  The boys participated in the program by singing a song with the Priest Quorum.  After church we raced home, jumped back into our PJ's and opened the rest of the presents!

PAJAMA HUNT

The kids gave us a new toaster and Dad a helicopter.

Caden gave Coelton a BYU hat

Caden got a couple of nice jackets and new goggles and snowboard back pack

I love these people!

Joel was a good boy this year and I gave him an ipad.  I was good too, cause I got an iphone.

Look at that spread!  She did well.

Something about Zebras?  Hailey got some Zips.  They are converse that zip off and have different color tops.  She was super excited about that. 



Christmas Vacation

We had a great Christmas Vacation.  We did so many fun things.  We didn't get any pictures of when Joel took the girls ICE SKATING.  I took the boys to a movie.

We went to the LIVE NATIVITY by our house.  This is Clyde the Cammel.  He is getting bigger and bigger every year.  We love Clyde.  The Nativity gets better and better each year.  It's a great tradition.

This is a (blurry) picture of Chloe I took before going to the Nativity.  She's so cute.

Coelton is working his arm.  We saw a lot of this during the Christmas break.

BAKING DAY!  I love this day, it's a lot of work and I am exhausted when we are all done.  It's so worth it.  This year we made peppermint cookies, and whoopie pies with peppermint filling.  We sprinkled peppermint candies from Sees on the plates too.  We delivered than to neighbors and friends.

What is Coelton doing?  It's so hard to get a good picture of him or Caden these days.  They HATE getting their picture taken.

BOTANICAL GARDENS!  We finally went to see the winter wonderland a glow.  We tried to go a few years ago, but they were closed.  It is a lot like temple square, but they have the reindeer Prancer and free hot chocolate and cookies, and miniature train sets.  There as no snow, but it was VERY COLD. 

GINGERBREAD CHAOS!  What do you get whern you invite 6 seven year olds over to make Gingerbread houses.  You guessed it...craziness.  They loved making the houses, but it didn't last long enough and pretty soon I had a bunch of girls running around the house screaming.  Hailey and I had to think fast and we played games with them to keep them from going crazy.  I guess they ate too much sugar while making their houses. 

CHRISTMAS EVE!  We always go to Jason and Stephanie's house for Christmas Eve.  I guess we should spread the love, and have them over to our house, but we don't have a nice big table or a high chair.  Plus Steph has the cutest Christmas dishes that I'm sure she is dying to use. 

Grandma and Grandpa Hammer spent Christmas with us this year, so they came along too.  I brought my preschool games "Don't Eat Santa!" and Christmas Bingo.  This was a lot of fun to play.  Part of our tradition is to act out the nativity story with my Nativity costumes.  I can't believe how big the kids are...seems like yesterday my boys were Joseph and Hailey was Mary.  Chloe makes a pretty cute Mary, I must say. 

Grandpa, looking at his watch and thinking, "how much longer is this going to go on?"  ha ha



Thanksgiving

Joel and I arrived home from Europe on November 23rd, just a day before Thanksgiving.  We decided not to make the drive to St. George to be with the Hammer family.  We stayed home instead and had a very quiet, intimate Thanksgiving.  Grandpa Judy came over and we loved having him with us.  We had never cooked our very own Thanksgiving dinner before.  Being with large families every year, we are always assigned a salad or dessert. 
Joel decided to tackle the turkey, so we began looking for recipes.  We decided on trying a brined turkey.  We put it in a large bucket with lots of "stuff" for several hours.  And it was Delicious!!!
We had all the trimmings and makings of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  Potatoes, gravy (made by Grandpa of course), jello, Green beans, rolls and pies with ice cream.  I even went all out and got some Chargers!  Oh, how I love chargers.
We had so much to be thankful for this year.  Expecially having Coelton with us.  He could have been taken from us in his accident and was given a second chance. 
We read the first thanksgiving story that Chloe made from school.  We also played a fun charades game during dinner.  I hid words on paper under everyone's plate.  They had to act out their word and we all had to guess what it was.  It was fun. 
We went to a movie after we all stuffed ourselves and cleaned the kitchen and had a nap.  We went to Hugo.  It was not the most exciting movie, but we enjoyed being together and seeing a movie on 3-D.
It was a great day.  I love my family. 
We recently got a new couch and I re-did some things in the living room.  I took these pictures on Thanksgiving to show our new room, complete with lots of new tables and lamps.  This picture doesn't even show 2 more lamps that we added.