Ringing in the New Year!!!

New Years Eve at Jon and Jens... More food, family, games, football and waiting for the BIG moment!

Ahhhh!

Christmas 2009

Christmas Eve we spent with Justin's family. Every year we participate in "Sled Races", a kid/adult white elephant gift exchange and a kid/man/woman gift exchange we drew names for. It's always a lot of fun with a lot of people and a lot of food!

We make sleds out of candy bars/boxed candy and candy canes. We came in 3rd place this year

Back at home we unwrapped pajamas, told the Christmas Story to our boys (flannel board) and went for a drive to look at lights and watch for Santa.

Christmas Morning we have family prayer then venture off to see what Santa brought!

Estin was SOOOO excited Santa brought him a train table! We had to cover it with a blanket and have him open his other presents first, but once he discovered there was something UNDER the blanket there was NO stopping him! We hardly saw him the rest of the day!

Eli loved his toys too!

My Grandma, Doris Nelson, handmade this piece (0ne of DOZENS she's done). Each stitch is an INCREDIBLE amount of time and love. Justin had it framed for me with a name plate "Doris H. Nelson. Hardanger" (The name of the stitch is hardanger). He couldn't have done anything sweeter....

Except maybe this... he typed 15 pages (single space) of our love story. How we met, how we fell in love, firsts... such as holding hands etc. Could I ask for anyone better!!! He REALLY outdid himself this year and was paying attention when I told him that I just wanted his gifts to come from the heart.

Me reading our love story

Justin and his MP3 Player for working out..

The Before....

The After Math...

Merry Christmas!!!!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!!!!

Here are a few highlights of our Christmas season...

We had the opportunity to attend the Christmas concert at the Conference Center featuring Natalie Cole. Justin and I both love the music of her father, the late Nat King Cole. It was pretty amazing!

Our little group... Oh, how I love this man!!!!

My nephew, Jarom proposed! (He got home from his mission in July!) Aleena's a great girl!

One of the many beautiful trees on Temple Square... this one is in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building

We took a "Train" ride (Trax) into SLC to see the lights on Temple Square. Estin was SO excited! (although you can't really tell from the picture :))

No, that's not Justin... that's Jordan and his family who joined us.

I look like I'm from the "Old Country" :)

Under my favorite tree... "The Atonement Tree"

I am SO grateful for my Savior....especially this time of year. Estin and Cael... fascinated by the tracks!

Estin's not so sure about Santa at our ward party... he kept saying "I think I wanna go home now"

I think Santa won him over!

I think Santa won over Eli too!

The other day Estin came in and said Buddy and Pooh Bear (Coo Bear) were sitting on the stairs waiting to say cheese for their picture.

The Hover family Christmas party... what started it all...TAMALES!

Estin's first Christmas gift of 2009 experience

Kelli's Family Trying to get a 4 year old, a 2.5 year old, a 2 year old, a 1 year old and a 5 month old to look at the camera at the same time!

Making gingerbread houses with our neighbor and her 4 girls who we just met

Estin's gingerbread train

Enjoying Christmas treats!

Eli's learning to roll over! This is as far as he can get right now...

Yum! :)