Christmas Adventures!

This wonderful season started off great! The day before we left to join Jared's aunts, and uncles, Reagan was able to make a Ginger Bread Train!! She did a GREAT job! We built it (already made, we just had to make the icing and glue the pieces together), and then Reagan decorated it all by herself. I dumped out candy and then let her at it! I just sat next to her with the icing to squeeze onto the candy. These are the pictures from the adventure.
Christmas Eve!!! We drove down to Hill Top about an hour south of Sydney(just FYI we are living about an hour NORTH of Sydney) That is where Jared's Aunt June, and Uncle Dennis (who were in Utah for Christmas last year) live! On Christmas Eve we had Jared's Aunts, and Uncles: June, Dennis, John, and Jim and his cousin Janet(and her husband Lyndsey) and their 3 kids Vanessa, Jaylee, and Alisha. It was a FULL house, but fun! On Christmas Eve R is allowed to open 1 present(a tradition from my childhood). It is always from her Grandma and its always new P.J. So these picture show the front room, and how excited R is about her new jammies!

A tradition from Jared's childhood is a "Santa Sack". You leave out your Santa sack, and Santa fills it with candy, and little toys, and leaves it at the end of the kids beds. Then whenever the kids wake up, they are allowed to go through their Santa Sack by themselves. We have never dones this tradtion until this year. This is R figuring out her Santa sack!

Presents!!! We have been VERY blessed this season with WONDERFUL gifts. Back home R (in Blue Haven)had some mysterious friends leave some presents at our front door. Then she got so many FUN presents! Her main gift was a kids digital camera/camcorder. She got the tutu, dress ups, and a princess camp chair! Jared's main gift was a book(I know sounds dumb, but he loves it!) My main gift was a gift card for Colorado(similar to Eddie Bauer), and The Proposal(YEAH). It was a BIG mess with all the family.
After presents we had Christmas Lunch. Uncle Dennis is a GREAT cook. Jared's cousins Janet/Lindsay and their 3 kids had to leave after presents. But Jared's other cousin Donna and her husband Sandy and their 2 kids came over for lunch! It was nice to meet more of Jared's family! We had lots of yummy food, and great time talking!

We had a GREAT Christmas. Funny thing is that its been cold and rainy here! Ok by cold I mean 70 degrees and raining. It feels COLD compared to what it has been! Good thing we didn't have Christmas on the beach! Anyways, it was a great day, and glad that Jared's has family here to spend it with! Just a fun note. At his aunt's and uncle's house there are wild parrots, and cockatoos that fly around(which is normal) but these one loves their house, because he feeds them seeds. Anyways, this is some of the pictures of the birds. It was REALLY cool! That one picture of R you can see one of the parrots behind her on the chair! ALL wild!

Its Begining To Look A Lot Like Christmas-Sort-of

So we went to the Sydney temple to see the Christmas lights. It had been raining on and off all day. It was sprinkling while we were looking at the lights, but it looks like snow in the pictures! It made me laugh because of the memories at Temple Square all bundled up from the snow!
Our family in front of the temple!

R and Uncle Jim skipping around the lights!

R LOVES her "iim"

The next day we had our ward Christmas party! Yes, it was at the beach!! We had never been to this beach before, but loved it!This is R holding her best friends little sister Gabby! Doesn't she look cute as an elf!

This was the park we had dinner at! Yes the blue under the pavillion is the ocean! What a cool ward Christmas party!

Jared was asked to be Santa, but they didn't have a suit! So they gave Jared the bag of candy AKA Lollies and she told all the kids "Get him, he has the candy" So all the kids took off chasing Jared! It was SO funny!

Then all the kids lined up from youngest to oldest and got their lollies from Jared!

It really is FINALLY starting to feel a little like Christmas! It has been fun trying to go as frugal as possible! Can't wait to post more pictures!

Day in Sydney

We went with Uncle Jim to Sydney to meet Jared's Aunt Caroline, and her grand-daughter Cherish. They were all going to see Mama Mia. So we caught a ride down to Sydney! Even though it is hot here, there are some festive things up!
After we left the 3 of them to go see the show in Darling Harbour. We crossed the main bridge across Darling Harbour and there was SOMETHING going on! So me not being to shy, asked. American Express was sponsoring this event called "Realise the Potential". They had many different things set up to get people to try something new! Painting was the main thing. Anyone could participate for FREE!!! So R and I decided to try our hand at painting.

For every canvas that was painted American Express was donating money to a charity(can't remember which). They also took a digital photo of each canvas painted,and AM EX would put together a website to display the art!

In the theme of "trying something new" they had a ton of different drums set up for anyone to jump in and try playing the songs! It was so cool!
R loved the FREE face painting. She got a blue butterfly!

After we finished our artwork we recieved free vouchers for any free drink at a stand! So this is Jared and I showing off our free drinks!

We had 5 hours to ourselves, but spent over an hour on the bridge. We decided to go up to Center Point Tower. We were going to try to get there with my family, but ran out of time. It was pretty cool to see Sydney like that!

R had no problems being up so either!

Sydney Harbour bridge, from the tower!

There is a store here similar to Macy's called David Jones. At their Syndey store they had these moving displays in their front windows. Each window had a classic Christmas song playing and the display corrisponded to the music (its hard to see, but this is "I Saw Three Ships")

At the same store inside they had a "Santa's Cave" which were full of these moving displays. The line to see Santa went through the cave.

After the show was done Jim, Jared, me, and R went to "The Gap" which is the ocean's inlet to the harbour.

It was SO beautiful!

We got dinner from a famous fish and chips shop. Ate on the beach, and watch the sunset over the harbour. What a great way to finish off our trip to Sydney!