Party Hardy

We have had quite the week.  It all started off with a big snow storm that took a while to dig out.  On Wednesday, Nick bought a truck!!!  Yeah!!!  His blazer has been slowing dying...the windows are stuck down about three inches, no heater, and no air conditioning.  And since the temperatures have stayed in the 20's all week, he was finally motivated enough to get a truck.  It is a 2006 Nissan Frontier crew cab with about 65,000 miles.  Nick is very excited to be the owner of his first truck.  We tested it out with the whole family this weekend and it works fine other than it fits all the people, but not much stuff, unless you put it in the truck bed.  Nick is looking forward to taking the boys camping in the truck for years to come.

On Friday, I had an activity days Christmas party.  Later that night, I went to my sister's work Christmas party at the Grand America hotel.  It is a lot of fun for me to go because "A"-I don't get out of the house much (so actually doing my hair and make-up is exciting) and "B"-I used to work there, so I know a lot of people and it is just fun to see them and visit. 

Saturday morning we went to my nephew Christian's big 3 year old airplane birthday party.  The kids had a ton of fun and so did the adults.  Then we hit another birthday party for some neighborhood kids before returning home to make a Jello salad for the ward Christmas party that we didn't attend because of our first annual Anderson Christmas party!!!  With our growing family, we hardly ever see each other at Christmas time anymore, so Kristen planned a nice party for everyone.  We had 19 people in our house mingling, eating, and unwrapping fun gifts. 

Grandpa pinned pilot's wings on all the grandkids.

We had a rousing white elephant gift exchange.

Grandma got all the grandkids pajamas.

She even got all the adult boys a nice festive pair of pajama bottoms....check out Ryan in the picture below.

Grandma gave all the grandkids a small bag of candy....Max quickly figured out that if he took his candy to grandpa that he'd unwrap it for him, so grandpa became his best friend.

We had a ton of fun and really enjoyed seeing the whole family for the holidays.  On a different note, Mabel and Sam are getting really good with imaginative play.  This week, after getting home from the store with a box of goldfish crackers, the kids got out my mixing bowls, spoons, and cookie sheets and poured the goldfish into the bowl, mixed them up, and put them on the pans to make "something".  Very cute!