Alaska Christmas Vacation: Brooklyn

 

Everyone loved holding Brooklyn and playing with her. Here are some shots of the family with our ‘Brookie bear’:

 

 

I love the next two shots and here is the background: When Stu was holding Brooklyn, she kept gravitating towards his arm- for some reason she loved resting her head on his arm. Kristin was taking some pictures of them together and the next two shots were taken immediately one right after the other. The second shot sure was a lucky, memorable shot!

Yup Brooklyn spit up right between Stu’s body and his arm! The next picture is his reaction:

PRICELESS!

Alaska Christmas Vacation: Gingerbread House and Sugar Cookies

All ten of us (our little family and Matt’s side of the family) worked together on a gingerbread house. It was hard to keep James from eating all of the candy, but overall I think he loved helping in this tradition!

 

On a different day James helped decorate sugar cookies- he loves cooking and helping out in the kitchen, so he loved this! Here he is with Aunt Amber and Aunt Ashley:

Alaska Christmas Vacation: Christmas Morning

 

Santa Came! This year has been fun- this is the first year that we really focused on teaching James the story of Christ as well as Santa, but I don’t know if he really understands that they are two separate stories… Next year I am going to have to ask parents how they helped their kids differentiate those two stories….

 

Here is James looking at the gifts that Santa brought:

Here is Matt trying on his new bike jersey (he loves it!):

Sadly this is one of the few pictures we have of Brooklyn in her Christmas dress because right after this picture she E.X.P.L.O.D.E.D!!  

Here I was showing James how to put the film in:

We had a wonderful Christmas and are SOOOO extremely grateful for the gifts that were given to our family! We love you all!

Alaska Christmas Vacation: Brooklyn’s Blessing

While we were up in Alaska, Brooklyn was blessed! It was so nice to have Stu and dad(Mauger) in the circle! Church was at 9 am and we were rushing to get out the door so we didn’t take tons of pictures, but here are some:

 

Alaska Christmas Vacation: Christmas Eve

Besides Christmas Eve sledding, the Mauger’s have a few other traditions on Christmas Eve. One of the highlights of that night was the Christmas Eve party. A few friends of the Mauger’s come over for dinner, a talent show, reenactment of Christ’s birth, playing chimes and socializing. I mostly took video that night, so I don’t have many pictures, but here are a few that I was able to snap:

Our beautiful little girl:

   

The nativity- Brooklyn was baby Jesus and James was a wise man:

 

I was such a proud mama at this moment (so corny but true!) :

 

Ashley did a Tahitian dance for her talent- ow ow!

One of the elders writes and plays his own music- the one song that he did as his talent brought me to tears! It was a song to Jesus from Joseph’s perspective. I don’t remember many of the lines, but one of the biggest themes from song that has stuck with me is Joseph telling baby Jesus to rest tonight because that would be his only night to rest for the rest of his life.

 

Chime time! James loved playing the chimes even though he didn’t play them correctly      

 

After the party was over, the tradition of opening one gift (everyone opens a set of pj’s). We then take pictures together. Here are pictures of the family right after the party and then in our pj’s:

 

Alaska Christmas Vacation: Christmas Eve Sledding

The Mauger Family has a tradition of going sledding on Christmas Eve. (I know that my last post was about sledding as well, but I had lots of pictures so I thought I would give it a post of its own). We decided to go at 11 am and had a blast. Brooklyn slept the entire time in the car, so Kristin, mom and I took turns watching her. James typically LOVES sledding, but he hated it this time. He did enjoy eating the snow though :) and making snow angels. When we got to the hill, Matt was the first one up and of course he had to go down the steepest part of it! I was nervous to go because I had only being sledding once before and it was a bad experience (we sledded on snow which was very icy and I got really cut up). Luckily this snow was really light and fluffy and about 2 feet deep. I went down with Matt and it was really fun! Here are some pictures:

James Loved eating the snow!

Matt and I going down together:

Matt going down by himself:

He is a stud even in his snow gear!

James making his snow angel:

I can’t remember why James was crying in this picture (either because he wanted hot chocolate or because he didn’t want to leave) but either way I thought the picture was memorable!