Riches Family Christmas

Christmas Day afternoon is always spent at Grandma Riches' (aka Grandma Bear-Bear) house. It used to be that we would open presents from G&G Riches but now we just get money, which is totally fine by all who receive. Now, instead we do a white elephant gift exchange. Which I might add is truly a good time. Luke started first because he was the youngest there.
The gifts he opened were a fish bowl with a plastic fish (I thought this was truly a genius gift and the fish, named Gus, now lives on my desk at work). He also opened one for Grant as well, since Grant was sleeping, and he opened a
The gift I opened was originally a box of chocolates but Dustin took them from me since it was an awesome gift so I picked another one and received a travel coffee mug with an awesome neon green sweat band and a sunglasses bag. Apparently that gift was so cool that Brad took that from me and I had to open another one of hazelnut hot chocolate mix that I knew Dustin would love.

Don, Karen(holding Boomer), Ean and Katie(holding Winston) Brandon.

Katie had a marvelous gift which included a can of nuts. Keep in mind that Katie is very allergic to nuts, she was not very impressed by the gift. So she gave it to Don and opened a mug full of candies and a pad of paper. Karen got a stuffed elephant with a blanket.

McKie, Colton, Marianne, Mark (holding Twix), and Libby (holding Snickers) Peck.
Connor is not in the picture because he is on his mission in the Marshall Islands - he did call on Christmas Day and we had a chance to talk to him and hear some humorous things happening to him on his mission.

Mckie opened a toy ball shooter and she gave it to Luke (who LOVES it by the way).

Grammy and Poppy

The Original Pierce Family
Joe, Laura, Mom, Poppy and Jay Pierce

Jay got the BEST gift - a package of senior diapers so everyone let him pick another gift and he picked another winner - Christmas pillow cases. Poor Jay!
Joe received a really cool bike horn and Poppy opened up a package of Spree candy canes and mint chocolates.

Shauna and George

Corri, Addie, Adam, George, Shauna holding Mary, and Sara

Grandma and Grandpa Riches
aka Grandma Bear-Bear and Grandpa Pop Pop

Uncle Brad
(Ashley chose not to be photographed)

Sara, Adam and Luke playing the organ

Gingerbread Houses

 We decided to try making our very own gingerbread houses this year with graham crackers. It turned out pretty well but we have some new ideas for next year.

Seth really got into putting a house together and he made a pretty awesome house. Luke and Dustin made a cool 2 story house, Tyson made a gingerbread car and Andrew made a cute little house. Even Grandma B. made a house.

We had so much fun.

Luke and Dustin won the prize for making the Nummiest gingerbread house.

Seth and Luke's gingerbread house

Andrew's house and Tyson's car

Seth, Sawyer and Jess Bowers

Jessica and Nathan with Tyson and Andrew White

First Encounter

Our ward had its annual Christmas Brunch. The Bishopric makes pancakes for the entire ward and Santa stops by to visit the children. 

It was Grant's very first time meeting Santa and it went pretty good. There wasn't any screaming or crying while trying to get away from a strange man in a red suit. Just an inquisitive look of "Who is this guy?"

Temple Lights

The day after Thanksgiving, the St. George Temple has a turning on the lights devotional. We didn't make it for the beginning but we did make it to see the lights. They are pretty nice just not as many as Salt Lake City. It was nice to walk around the temple in a light jacket and see the lights. Luke of course was in heaven and was exploring every where. Good thing we had an extra four sets of eyes to watch out for him.

Dustin holding Grant, Poppy holding Luke, Joe with Grammy and Jay sitting in front of him.

Add caption

Luke didn't want to be in our family picture. Oh well!

The Boys!

Luke loves manger scenes and he spent a little time looking at this life sized display. You can see the outline of his head in front of one of the animals.

You've Been Boo-ed

I was doing the dishes after dinner one night when the doorbell rang. I went to answer it but no one was there. Instead there was a treat on our doorstep! We don't know who it was but there was a not that said we had just been Boo-ed and that we needed to Boo someone else the next day. It was very exciting, I mean who doesn't like it when someone leaves a treat on your front step?

So Luke picked a couple families to visit and off we went. Unfortunately he picked 2 houses that had a lot of steps in front and Dustin had to carry him (it was a little hard on the back). But he really loves these covert missions.

You can't see in this picture but Dustin and Luke are running like cray back to our car, I was the get-away driver.

Fourth of July

We started our Fourth of July pretty early. Grammy and Poppy wanted to take Lucas to the parade and they showed up before 8 AM to pick up Lucas for the parade. Dustin and I hurried to get ready and then walked down to where they were seated. Lucas was having so much fun collecting candy from the different floats.

Jay had gone to IHOP to get some breakfast and he was nice enough to get us some breakfast too. what a nice brother/uncle!

Grant slept through the parade - I guess it wasn't that interesting to him!

This is what we ALL did after we got home from the parade - took a nap!

We had dinner at our house that night. Grammy bought steaks for everyone and we had a feast! After dinner she made funnel cakes for everyone - they were so good! Grandma Bear-Bear and Grandpa Pop-Pop joined us for fire works in front of our house afterwards.

Jay and Joey bought fireworks for the boys to light. Lucas was so excited. He told me a couple days before that uncle Jay was going to take him to buy some fireworks and they were going to buy a red one, a blue one, a green one, and maybe even a white one! He LOVED it.

 The Fireworks show that Murray was shorter than they usually do but we still enjoyed it. I love the fact that we can see them from our house but after the show, I go into the house and go to bed. No traffic jams for us!