Noah's Basketball Team

Noah tried out and made the 6th grade basketball team. Noah and his friend Jayce are the only 5th graders on the team. This week they had their first home game, yeah! The month of December all their games were away and since we live in Page that means traveling 1-2 hours for each game. Jonah and Scott only missed one away game, they went to Kayenta 3 times, Shonto, Navajo Mountain, and Tuba City. Everyone except Hannah went to Noah's game in Cameron, we ate at the restaurant after the game, it has the best Navajo tacos and fry bread we have ever had! We drove home in a blizzard. Scott has stories of his coaches almost going off the road in snow. Noah is following his dad's footsteps. We like taking Noah home in our suburban because the coach doesn't always have seat belts for everyone! Everything runs on rez time and his schedule changes at least twice a week but he has had fun and we love watching him play. Noah has scored a basket in every game and wants to keep up his streak.

We Love Chocolate!

Hannah had her birthday party on Jan. 9. We had a chocolate party. Hannah made her own invitations that had different pics of chocolate. We had chocolate pizza for dinner (and pepperoni). The girls then made chocolate dipped pretzels, with dark, milk and white chocolate. They got very creative with the sprinkles and coloring. We let each girl pick someone they wanted to take their treats to and we put them in cute bags, the girls made note cards. We then drove around dropping off the treats. When we got home it was 9:30 and we started our chocolate fountain. The girls ate 9 lbs of strawberries in one night! We also dipped cinnamon hearts, pound cake, bananas, and marshmallows. In the morning we made double chocolate waffles for breakfast. Hannah has fun friends and it was a blast.

Merry Christmas!

Esther got a hairstyling apron from Grandma Hardy, so she went right to work on Hannah's hair.



Noah had wrapped the present he bought for Jonah in 6 different boxes one inside the other-the outside box was enormous! Jonah had to keep tearing off paper to get to the next box and this pic shows Jonah finally getting to his present.


We had a wonderful Christmas! Christmas Eve day we always make and decorate gingerbread cookies to leave for Santa. Our friends the Mallavias came over to help. Christmas Eve night we have our big ham dinner and our friends the Skaggs came over. Then the kids performed the nativity. Esther was Mary, Jonah was Joseph, Ezra a donkey, Noah a shepherd, and Hannah and Laura were angels. We love this tradition. Hannah, Noah, and Jonah played Christmas songs on the piano and we sang along. Christmas morning it is our tradition that Santa puts a sheet up covering the front room where he brought presents. The kids all slept in Noah's room. They woke up at 7 and have to come upstairs to wake us up. I go down to the kitchen and make orange julius for everyone and we drink it up in our bedroom. Then we have family prayer before the kids line up on the stairs for a Christmas morning picture. Then Scott opens the curtain and the kids can see what Santa brought. After an hour or two of Santa gifts, we eat breakfast which of course is hootenanny pancakes. Then we open our presents. We are so blessed to have healthy kids and a good job. We love this time of year.