Christmas Day for the Hill's

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We did thanks to the love of our friends and family. I hope you enjoy the video and pictures of our Christmas Day.

To play the video below, please double click on the arrow in the lower left hand side of the box.

In the video below, the kids seemed to have more fun with the paper than their new toys! :)

In the next pic, it looks like someone has found the candy stash in his stocking...

In the pic above, I kept hearing Poopie saying "uh-oh" so I looked on the TV and there was a boxing sceen from the movie Rocky. Poopie was very concerned that they were hitting eachother. I changed the channel, but not before I took a pic of his expression. :)

Pictured above are our neighbors who came over to have Christmas Dinner with us. I have to apologize to them because the food was WAY to salty!!! Ooops. I should have warned them that I was a terrible cook. The only thing that was good was the Sparkling Cider! (Which of corse came pre-bottled and safe from my harm... )

The Hill Family's "Operation Cookie Drop"

It has been a Hill Family Christmas tradition from the time Eric and I got married to bring cookies & cupcakes to our neighbors and friends in the days before Christmas. Because we do EVERYTHING last minute, we did this on December 23 & 24th. :) (As with all the other years despite our best efforts to start earlier the next year...) This year was special because we are just getting to know our new friends and neighbors so this tradition actually helps facilitate the "greetings". This year, like with other things, I am less controlling and my kids actually took a great part in the baking! I have to admit, I did go back over the cupcakes with an additional coat of frosting, but that was it! :) Oh wait, and I gave DETAILED step by step instuctions. But at least they got to finally touch the cookie dough! lol

Double click on the arrow below to watch the video of Poopie getting ready for...

"Operation Cookie Drop."

Double click on the arrow below to see the the video of the little Elves dropping off the cookies. :)

Fashion Show

Introducing... the Hill kids in fashions provided by my mom. :) We got a box in the mail today with new outfits and they wanted to model them for Grandma. She also provided the Christmas jammies! Here's a look...

We can't wait for Santa!

Here We Come Ah-Caroling...

Tonight our family was blessed to have the Young women and men from our church come caroling at our house. :) They are so sweet, warm and so much fun to watch. After they sang for us, they gave us too many goodies to list. This really touches my heart because we are very down lately because I have not yet received my first check from disability and the goodies they gave us were not just wanted, but very needed. How wonderful it is to be a part of a church that loves us so much? How wonderful is it for young people to spend their time spreading joy? How wonderful is it to know that the members of our church are working in callings purely out of their love for God and eachother, not a paycheck. (All "positions" in our church are voluntary, even up to the Bishop, Stake Presidency, etc positions) I know my children will remember the blessings we received this season. I will not let them forget. I am overwhelmed by the true meaning of family and friendship. I am grateful that I am starting to understand that there might be bigger lessons to be learned from this...

Happy Birthday ERIC! (aka Daddy)

My Dear husband Eric turned... 21 according to him, on December 14th. I remind him that he graduated high school in 88 so the math does not add up, but he still insits that he is but a young man in his 20's. :) To celebrate, we had cake and ice cream with the Hafen's from our church. Andi loved playing with their baby and their todler Ben helped Eric blow out the candles. :) It was a nice evening and we were happy that they could spend time with us. Poopie seemed most excited about his cake which he carried around with him once he left the table... Happy Birthday Babe. I love you.

Before reading the next post...

You will need to turn off the music so you can hear Poopie's performance. If you scroll down, look on the right side of the page until you see the Sonific Music Spot. Just click on the pause button and you are ready to go! You will not want to miss Poopie's big performance! :)

Poopie's Christmas Pagent

My Poopie Boy is a STAR! Well, not quite, but in my mind, he was the star of the show. Poopie had his Christmas pagent last week for his little school and I was so impressed. I LOVE his pre-school. They even had the class for the 12 month olds doing a little dance with garland. :) Poopie's class had to shake their self made "paper plate and bean" tamberines to the tunes of Frosty the Snowman. Since I wanted to get GREAT pictures, I had the bright idea of getting there really early to sit in front. (There must have been at least 700 people there all to watch 5 pre-school classes) When the curtin opened, I could barely see him in the back with his teacher. (the teacher on your right) if you look really carefully, you can see his little head peaking out from behind the girl in front of him. Anyway, he was doing fine until his teacher moved him forward so he could be seen and he caught sight of me. He tried to run towards me but they were on a stage so his teacher had to catch him. As soon as she picked him up, he started crying HARD. The audience all let out a big "awwww" at the same time. :) I have a small video taken with my camera that is posted below. I had to turn if off mid-performance because I also had my real video camera and this was to good to miss. What you can't see is that he eventually stopped crying and even shook his little instrument, but then the curtin started to close so he started crying all over again. If I ever learn how to post real video on this thing, I can show you the entire sceen. :) After his performance was over, he came to sit with us and he LOVED watching the other kids sing and dance. He was trying to dance in the isles but I told him that he already had his chance. In my eyes, he still was the best and cutest of them all! :)

Program

Poopie's name is the 5th down on the left side

Click twice on the arrow below to see the video... Enjoy!

PARTY!

Last night, some of the new neighbors (there were a few who could not make it) on our street got together for a "Get-To-Know-You" progressive dinner party. This is where you have each course of your dinner at a different house. We now have about 9 houses on our street. It's beginning to look like a real neighborhood! :) Our family had so much fun and we are so relieved to have such an awesome group living on our street!

The first set of pics were taken at the Vukin home where we had salad.

The pics below were taken at the James home where we had the main course. Sorry there are not many pics taken here, I was eating! :) Your eyes are not deceiving you... I am in the middle of the second pic!

This final group of pics were taken at our house where we served cake, cookies and hot apple cider! Yum!