Christmas Eve Dinner with the Copes

For Christmas Eve every year we go to my parent's house for dinner and a gift exchange with the people with whom we draw names. We had a very nice, delicious dinner while enjoying everyone's company. After dinner everyone helped to hurry and clean up so that we could head downstairs for the traditional post-dinner festivities.

First off, my mom gave the scriptures to Joseph so that he could read to us the Christmas story of Jesus in the Bible. Then my mom handed me the book 'Twas the Night Before Christmas to show the pictures while we listened to it on CD. Then we were finally able to open our presents. At this point the kids were VERY anxious.

Everything gets really hectic at this point because there are so many kids. We are outnumbered 18 adults to 22 grandchildren. My mom always tries to have us open them in order from youngest to oldest (this is how we always did it growing up). At this point she gets a little stressed and starts getting a little annoyed because it doesn't ever go as smoothly as she wants. We always just get a kick out of it and enjoy watching and listening to all the chaos. Since Nash is the youngest grandchild for now he got to go first. My mom calls out, "Okay, who has Nash's name?" There was complete silence with many puzzled faces. Anyone? Anyone? Nobody spoke up. Poor Nashy - somebody forgot about him on his first Christmas. Everyone starts asking who has Nash but nobody knew so Stephanie had to go look at her email with the list and see who had his name. Turned out that there was a bit of a confusion and Adriana ended up having two people buy her a present instead of Nash getting one. So it didn't start out so well but my mom hurried and saved the day and went and grabbed Nash's present from her and my dad. Luckily Nash is a baby and doesn't really care or else he might have felt a little bad that he was forgotten.

After everyone opened their gifts my parents gave all the adults their gifts. They always give us all the same thing. We all got a bunch of great food storage.




This is the little kid table. It is a perfect short little table with small chairs for the kids. Whytli was lucky enough to graduate to the big adult table this year along with some of the older grandkids.

This is Nash waiting for some to bring him his gift! Poor Nashy! (Just kidding Cynthia)

Mallory got a homemade quiet book for church from one of Stephanie's kids (made by Stephanie). She loved it.

The kids anxiously waiting their turns.

Adelie got a homemade church bag with items for her to take to church to keep her entertained.

Whytli got a homemade church bag as well with the same stuff inside (both from Stephanie's children and made by Stephanie). They both loved them.

Brett got a gift card to Buckle from Cynthia and I got a bracelet and some perfume from Carrie.

Our Horribly Dangerous Stairs!

Tonight while the kids and I were waiting for Brett to get home from work so we could eat dinner, I decided to wrap a couple of presents in the kitchen at the counter. The girls were watching and Nash was playing with the magnets on the fridge. The next thing we knew we heard this loud bang and went running to find this chair at the bottom of the stairs with Nash on top of it. He had crawled to this chair and started pushing it around with him while crawling and went to the edge to the stairs and then down. Luckily he was not hurt. I thought he would have something broken or a bruise or something but there was not one bruise or scratch on him. The stairs and walls had a few dings and black marks all the way down and surprisingly my chair was not broken. I was thankful nothing worse had happened to Nash.


Our stairs are all wood with no carpet and are the most dangerous things EVER! We have all fallen and gotten hurt on them many times. They may look nice but they are not nice to us at all. We have all finally learned that you cannot run up the stairs and you have to always make sure your feet are all the way on the stair before going up or down them. I would never recommend anyone putting wooden stairs in their home EVER. They were like this when we bought the home. When we remodeled our house about a year ago we got new railings for the stairs and I guess the new ones are longer, so no baby gate will work. We are not able to put one at the top of the stairs. We are able to put one on the other set of stairs at the top but the way the the railing and the wall meet on the other side it does not work so we have to watch Nash very closely.

Playing Games for Family Home Evening

Tonight for Family Home Evening we decided to play a game, so we played Sorry. Mallory was teamed up with Brett and the rest of us were on our own team. I was the yellow and won of course. Brett was trying to teach the kids good strategy and how to win. Afterward we made chocolate chip cookies.

I Want to Go to School

Whytli had a Christmas School Sing so we went to watch her. We were not able to get any good pictures of her singing because they had it dark in the auditorium and my pictures did not turn out. She did a great job and is always excited for us to come see her at school. Afterward we went to her classroom to get her stuff and go home and I sat Nash at her desk. He thought that was the greatest thing ever. He started bouncing up and down laughing, he was grabbing everything out of her desk and playing with it. He felt like a big boy sitting in her chair.

Sleepy Nashy Boy

Brett came home from work today to find Nash in the kitchen by himself like this. He was sound asleep in his highchair. The kids and I were busy getting some things done and I had fed him dinner and when he was all done he got fussy and I could not help him out at the moment so he started to cry and ended up crying himself to sleep in his chair. He had not had a nap all day and was VERY tired. I was downstairs for a minute and thought he had just stopped crying. Poor little guy.

Playing in the Snow

This was our first big snow storm for the winter season and my kids of course were dying to play outside in it. I of course, being the big grouch that I am about the SNOW did not want to have them go out and play. I absolutely HATE everything about the snow. It makes me very ornery and every year I am reminded of how much I hate it and want to live somewhere else. Anyway, I was trying to make up every excuse possible of why they could not play outside in the snow (your boots are too small, coats too small or your gloves are too small) but everything that I had an excuse for Brett found a solution for. I was even trying to bribe them into not wanting to go out and play but it wasn't working. Now before you think that I am a big Grinch and do not let my kids have any fun you also have to hear me out as to the other reasons why I hate having them go outside to play in the snow. I do not enjoy having to take FOREVER to bundle them all up and get everything just perfect, then have them go outside and come back 5 MINUTES later to say that they need to go to the bathroom and have to take everything off and start all over again. Then they are out there for about 15 minutes and become really cold and realize that they do not like the cold like their mother and come back in and have to help them in the freezing cold garage to get everything off all over again. Now if they were to play out there for at least a couple of hours and not have to go to the bathroom 5 minutes after you send them out I might be okay with them playing out there and not be a big grouch about it and not care that they want to play in the snow but this happens EVERY time. I remember when I was a kid and loved the snow we used to play out there for hours and make forts and go sledding and do all sorts of fun stuff. Maybe my orneriness of the snow rubs off on them and they realize after the 15 minutes of being out there that it isn't all that great like I am always complaining about. I guess I just need to get over this and let them enjoy their 15 minutes out there and then come back in to the nice warm house and have some hot chocolate.

Needless to say, they had a good 15 minutes of playing out there and did come back in and enjoyed some hot chocolate.

They had their cousin Kynli over to play in it with them and Whytli's friend from school - Anna Carter.

A New Visitor in Our House - Eddie the Elf

Last Sunday night our family was sitting in the kitchen (we had just gotten back from our St. George trip that day) when we heard a knock at the door. The kids ran to see who it was and found a box with a big white envelope addressed to us attached to it. It looked like the envelope had come straight from the North Pole from Santa himself. We opened the box to find a special friend who will be staying with us this Christmas. It was an elf that we had to name and adopt as our own. The name that we chose was Eddie the Elf. Inside the envelope it told us all about our special little elf that would be watching over our family this Christmas season. Eddie is special and has magic and cannot be touched or he will lose his magic. Eddie watches us all day and then at night he goes back to Santa's workshop to help Santa make toys and report on how our family is doing. He's a funny little elf in that he's forgetful and forgets where he was last in our home. So each day when we wake up, we have to search for him. He has been in the craziest of places. We have found him hanging from decorations, on top of the cupboard, hanging from the light, and in the kids' bedroom on their lamp. It's always fun to look around the house and see where Eddie has wound up. We were told in the letter that if we are good, Eddie will return to us every year. The kids are having so much fun with him. I really hope that he keeps coming back to us. Eddie has even left the kids a few letters. He lets them know how they are doing (sometimes it isn't good) and he has really sloppy handwriting.

I'm a slacker... I know

It has been a while since I have done a real post....I've been quite the slacker. I promised myself that I would catch up everything from the last few months that I have slacked and back blog everything. I want to make a book for the year out of this blog for my scrapbook/journal so I need to have everything in here. Anyway, I thought I would put a couple of funny things that my kids have said or done recently before I forget them.

About a month ago Mallory finally started repeating the family prayers after someone is saying it. She has been very involved in our family prayers forever by folding her arms, closing her eyes and having to make sure she had her total attention before we were even allowed to start but we have forever been trying to convince her to say the prayers but she would not. One day I was saying the family prayer before the kids were going to go to bed and Mallory was repeating everything I would say. Adelie and Mallory had dance the next day so in my prayer I said, "Please bless Adelie and Mallory at dance tomorrow," and Mallory, instead of repeating this, yelled really loud, "YEAH!" She is a HUGE fan of dance and loves it so much. We all could not help but to bust up laughing it was so funny.

Last week while we were in St. George I was doing Adelie's hair and she said to me with total attitude, "Mom, we do not have enough kids." I said to her, "We don't? How come you say that?" She said, "Because Grandma Cope had lots of kids and we need lots of kids like her!" I said, "Oh really, you think we need more kids?" She then said with even more attitude "Yes mom! And if you go to the doctor and have him do that thing that Stephanie (my sister) had him do to her I am going to be really mad!" I was quite shocked at this. Stephanie had a partial hysterectomy done in August so she no longer can have kids. I was mostly shocked that she even knew that she had something done to her that would prevent her from having any more children. I guess that just proves that kids listen and know more than you think they do.

This morning Mallory informed us that Nash was going to live with another family. We told her no he wasn't. She said, "Yes, he is going to take his crib, toys, bottles and dresser and go to another house." Brett told her, "No he isn't he is going to stay with us." She said, "No he isn't because he is naughty so he has to go to another house." We laughed and told her he wasn't naughty and he wasn't going to go live with another family.

This afternoon when I picked up the kids from school Whytli was telling Harrison and Parker how she got a letter from Santa this morning. Parker said with really big eyes, "You did? I want a letter from Santa. How did you get it?" She told him that she wrote a letter to him last night for her, Adelie and Mallory because they wanted to tell him what they all wanted for Christmas since Santa was not able to make it to Grandma Cope's Christmas party this year. So they wrote a letter to Santa and gave it to our elf, Eddie (I will explain about him in a later post) and she said she told Eddie the Elf to please give this letter to Santa. All the while when she is telling all of this to Parker he was listening with real excitement in his face. She then said that she went to bed with her fingers and arms crossed (hoping that if she crossed her fingers and arms this would help the luck of Eddie taking her letter to Santa) and when she woke up they were still crossed. When she went upstairs Eddie the Elf was in a different spot and next to him was a letter that was typed up on red paper from Santa Claus himself. Whytli told Parker all about it and what it said. Parker got really excited and then said, "I'm going home and writing a letter to Santa and giving it to our Elf and I hope Santa writes me back a letter too!"

Decorating the Christmas Tree

After making all the decorations and letting them dry, the following day after school I let the kids decorate the tree by themselves. They had a great time doing it. I let them put them wherever they wanted and arrange it however they wanted. They were so proud of all the decorations that they had made.

Making Christmas Tree Decorations

I decided as a new family tradition we would create our own decorations for our family Christmas tree. I have always had a really nice, pretty tree and I thought it was time to let the kids be more involved instead of worrying about having such a pretty tree that I don't want anyone touching it. Also, while my kids are young I though we should let them do it themselves and enjoy it more and also create fun family memories. The kids loved this idea. So tonight before putting them to bed I decided to pull everything out that I had for them to do and let them have at it. They had so much fun and everyone in the family got involved in the creation process - even Brett. We decorated Christmas trees, gingerbread men, snowflakes, stars, and snowmen.

Some of the finished products.

Brett's snowman. He was pretty dang proud of this thing and it only took him the entire time to decorate it.

Brett busy at work with the precious snowman.

Nashy wasn't having as much fun so he went to bed shortly after we started.

Whytli hard at work. Notice the tongue, it always comes out when she is concentrating on something very serious.

Adelie busy at work.

Mallory having a hard time getting her glitter to come out.

Annual Cope Christmas Party

Every year my mom has a Christmas party on the first Monday of December. Usually Santa comes but this year he was too busy and could not fit us in his schedule (I won't lie and say that my kids were not disappointed). My kids really look forward to this party every year. This year we had dinner, wrote letters to the soldiers in Iraq, gathered food to take to the food bank, and tied blankets for the homeless shelters. My mom then gave us all 3 Christmas books to add to our collection (she is a huge fan of Christmas books). Then we practiced some Christmas songs from the hymn book and went to my Grandma & Grandpa Cope's to sing them some Christmas carols.

This is my mom giving us the instructions for what we will be doing before we can eat.

Everyone pitched in and helped tie the blankets. We went for easy fleece blankets that we tied together.

The kids had a great time making cards to send to some soldiers in Iraq.

Nashy wanted to join in on the fun. He felt rather big sitting at the kid table.

This is Grandpa Cope (or Grandpa Great, as my kids would call him). He is the cutest grandpa ever.

Grandma Cope (or Grandma Great).

The kids singing Feliz Navidad to everyone.

My kids with Grandma and Grandpa Cope.

My grandparents really enjoyed having us come over and sing to them. My grandpa had a big smile on his face the whole time.