Pre-Christmas Activities

We have been busy having fun all month! I love the Christmas season and the spirit and busyness that accompany it. Here are a few pictures of the fun things we have been up to.

Our tree! Decorating the tree is definitely one of my highlights. I also love turning the lights on every day. Yes, ours was lit just about every DAY!

Rylee helping decorate the tree. She was such a great helper!

Ryan loved crawling under the tree and playing with the lights and ornaments

Cody hanging the lights

My loving kids

Rylee has been going to Pre-School at the Washington Community Center. They did a cute little Christmas program. It was so fun to watch Rylee! She memorized her part and had lots of fun singing all the songs. Here we now are, a week after Christmas and she still loves singing the songs!! =)

She loves Santa Claus!

Another fun tradition we look forward to, is the Barnes Christmas party. It's great to gather with so much family, eat lots of food, play games, do a white elephant gift exchange, a Nativity scene, sing happy Birthday to Baby Jesus, have Santa come and of course, play games!!

Rylee and "HER James"

Kisses!

Ryan wasn't too sure about Santa at first...

then he was fascinated by his beard... he almost pulled it off as we were taking him off Santa's lap!

Opening his trucks with Daddy

Rylee had been asking Santa for a My Little Pony Play house all year

and that's what he brought her! She had to hug it!! =)

My mom's siblings and Dad!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Another fun tradition, is that we go bowling with the Jimenez's Christmas Eve day over in Cedar City. Ryan and I weren't feeling too well, so we opted out this year. Cody went ahead and took Rylee and she had a BLAST with all her cousins. She even got a strike!

Hopefully I'll get around to posting Christmas soon! We hope everyone has had a great Christmas. We are so thankful for the many fun times we've had with our family and friends. And even more thankful for our Savior's life and his perfect example to us. Happy New Year!

Thanksgiving!

Better late than never, right? We spent Thanksgiving in Kanab with my family this year. We had so much fun playing games and spending time with family. Rylee and I don't eat much when it comes to Thanksgiving dinner, but everyone else said it was delicious!!

The line-up

Rylee and her roll, yes, the ONLY thing she ate

Ryan doin his thing!

5 out of us 7 kids were there. We really missed seeing Mike & Jeni and Sam!

The day after Thanksgiving was spent hanging lights, decorating the tree and playing more games. This years games centered around Settlers of Catan and Rook and Candyland, for my wonderful brothers who helped entertain Rylee!). Lots of fun was had by all.

Our family in front of the tree

The Wyatts

My amazing parents

71% of the Pace kids

Update Coming!

I know I have been a terrible blogger! Sorry! I will have a grand post coming on Christmas and our fun happenings in the next couple days. For now though, I wanted to document a cute conversation I had with Rylee while we were in Milford yesterday at Cody's parents' house.

Rylee: (looking at a picture of Jesus) "Mom, there's another picture of Jesus. He lives in Heaven. Mom, Destri lives in Heaven too! Where's a picture of Destri?"

(I took her into Destri's room and showed her several pictures of Destri).

Rylee: "Mom, when's Destri coming back from Heaven?"

Me: "Honey, Destri's going to be in Heaven for a very long time, but we'll see her again."

Rylee: "Mom, Why did Destri go to Heaven?"

Me: "She died in a car accident honey." (Rylee gave me a confused look). "She crashed her car and got very hurt and died."

Rylee: "Mom, did Jesus crash his car too?"

Me: "No sweetie, Heavenly Father sent Jesus to Earth to teach us how to be good. There were bad people who killed Jesus."

Rylee: "And then Jesus went to Heaven too, huh Mom."

Me: "That's right. When Jesus died he went to Heaven, and then 3 days after he died Heavenly Father resurrected him and he came back to life."

(Rylee thought about this for a minute) Then said (jumping up and down excitedly) "Mom, Heavenly Father will bring Destri back to life too!"

My eyes welled up with tears as I told her that she was right and as long as we choose the right and follow Jesus, Heavenly Father will bring us all back to life.

I am so thankful for my sweet girl and for the example she is to me. Her faith is so simple and strong. I know that she was saved to come forth in these times, and sometimes her stubbornness tests my limits, but I know it will be a great blessing throughout her life.

"Tricker-Treat!"

I believe this is my last post on Halloween! Tons to catch up on, but I am sad that it's over. I LOVE Halloween!

This year we hung out in our neighborhood. Saturday afternoon our neighborhood did a chili dinner. There were soooo many people! It was great to get to meet so many new faces. There were some fun kid games and a costume parade. We got tons of compliments on our costumes and it was so much to dress up together. Thanks babe for being such a good sport =) Cody was feeling a little out of place that not many "adults" were dressed up. He was great though. Rylee loved having her daddy be Aladdin.

I was a little nervous about being Jasmine too, because for months Rylee had been telling me that I was going to be Rajah, but I couldn't find a tiger costume I liked- they all either looked like a mascot or were really skanky. While I was searching in the classifieds for an Aladdin costume, I ran across a really good deal for an Aladdin and Jasmine, so that's what we went with. Rylee ended up loving that I was Jasmine with her. On our way home after Trick-Or-Treating she even told me I made a really pretty big Jasmine! Oh, how I love my Rylee!

Getting ready to head out

A close up of our chunky monkey!

Aren't I glowing?! haha... thanks for not catching that one babe!

The closest thing we got to a family picture- darn sun

Waiting in line to do the fish pond

The cake walk- I love the shadow her bag is casting

She won!

Trick-or-Treating

She still hasn't quite learned to wait at the door; she just walks right into the houses!

It's become a tradition of ours to stop by Cody's Grandpa Chamberlain's. It's great to visit with them and they love seeing our costumes.

Yes, those are Rylee's real eyelashes!
(At our neighborhood party I had a lady ask me how I got Rylee to sit still to put on fake eyelashes. She couldn't believe me when I told her they were real! Yea, I think we're going to be in trouble in a few years!)

We hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween! We are very excited to get ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas and all the fun family times to come!!!

"Punkin' Carvin'"

Wow! I've had lots of posting to do lately! We are finally almost caught up with all our fun Halloween activities- just our actual Halloween Night is left to follow.

Here are some pictures of our pumpkins! I love carving pumpkins! It's one of the highlights of Halloween. I HATE gutting them though; so much that I just can't do it! haha. This year actually worked out pretty good, it was the Wednesday before Halloween and we still hadn't carved them and I had cub scouts and wouldn't get home until almost 8, so I talked Cody into gutting them while I was gone and then we'd carve them when I got back. My sweetie agreed! bahahaha... did he notice how sneaky I was? Yes, he knows me too good! It was nice to get home and jump right into carving.

Rylee was so much fun! She was SOOO SOOO SOOO excited. Hers was finished first and we couldn't light it quick enough for her. I love her zest for life and how excited she gets over everything!

Rylee's little bat, Cody's monster and my ghost! As we were taking this picture we realized we should have had one to represent Ryan... oh, well, we'll remember next year!

Preschool Halloween Party

On Thursday, Rylee's preschool had a Halloween day. She goes to the Washington City Community Center. She loves it! She was so excited to wear her costume to school.

They stated things off with a little carnival, where they played some games in their room. I missed most of it. Cody and I did catch the last game where they had all the kids cover their eyes and they'd choose one kid to hide behind the sheet. Then they'd have all the other kids guess who it was.

This was when Rylee was chosen to be the ghost.

Then they did a trunk-or-treat. There weren't very many parents who dressed up, so I did feel a little out of place. But Rylee was excited to have me be Jasmie with her. It was sooo cold though! Rylee got a good stash of candy!

Rylee getting her goody bag from her teacher, Ms. Liz