"The Holidays" 2014

Our family is wrought with the Holiday controversy - you know the one.  Someone wants to feel the magical feeling of Christmas as long as possible - starts shopping early, listening to jolly music, etc, etc.  And the other is.... well, wrong. An Ebenezer of Christmas joy.  I know you could never guess which is me and which is Jeff.  BUT since I'm the one typing this blog, I get to say how it goes and I say it is "THE HOLIDAYS." Meaning that it is one big family party from Halloween to New Years and Christmas stuff is allowed anytime in that time frame. (But I digress.)  Therefore, here are all our 2014 holidays in one!

Halloween:
Halloween didn't seem quite as crazy in '14 as it usually does.  I didn't really decorate much, and I missed out on one of the Witch nights, plus I didn't shuttle the kids around to all the different venues for ToT that we usually do.  It was kind of nice, though I'm sure I'll be back at it next year. :)
My mom came with me to Chris' annual witch party, where we had soups, treats and made cute black cats.  I really love that adult time every year!  For Gardner Village, the girls were Elsa witches this year, it was adorable.  They reported having a blast. (I missed it, cause I was at a Secret Sister Dinner... More on that later, hopefully.) The girls each had a costume parade at school, too.  It worked out that I was able to go to Amie's and Jeff was able to go to Lisie's (I hate missing that stuff, but at least dad was there.  He likes being able to be part of that stuff too.) In both parades, there were quite a few Elsa's. :)  As always, though, our girls' costumes got many compliments and were the best one's because Chris makes them all by hand!
For the Poynor family party, the girls dressed up as the Twin Princesses of Legendale, Dawn and Eve. (I know- you've never seen that movie.)  Carson was Olaf, but since I used face paint and he is 2, he turned into a scary clown of your nightmares! Oops.
Our ward does a really great Trunk or Treat at the elementary school, where the kids got more candy than ever! (Our candy bowl ran out halfway.)  They had soup and bread and donuts, as well as movies made by the youth in our ward.  They leave Church out of it and invite the whole neighborhood - I think the entire neighborhood came!  Since we did that, we decided to go spend Halloween at my mom's again.  That is always fun.  Trick or treating, movies, etc. For both, the girls were dresses as Elsa, Carson was an ADORABLE cop, and Acee was a ballerina, then a reindeer (I was a Christmas tree and Jeff was a protester against Christmas-before-Halloween.)  Here are some pictures:

For Thanksgiving, we ate a fabulous meal at my parents' house, and then a bit later, more family came for leftovers, pie and games.  We mostly played Ripple and it was a blast! (A loud, loud blast!)

Christmas Eve and Day were spent with our families and fantastic as always!!