Christmas!!!

Santa came to our house!

The girls coming into the living room. We always make them wait until we're settled before they can come in.

Santa even brought the animals some stuff. Roxie got a squeaky bone, a rope toy, and a snowman squeaky toy. She loves the yellow squeaky bone the best. The cats got toys too.

Deanna got an electronic sign for Christmas this year. Jason got it for her and had programmed "Merry Xmas Deanna" By the end of the day she had programmed it at least 3 more times.

B'Elana got a cupcake maker, a camera, and Hannah Montana stuff. She also got Littlest Pet Shop bubble bath.

Jason wore his University of Utah Santa hat all day :)

Relaxing and talking after all the gifts had been opened. We also went to see "Bedtime Stories." That show is so cute. I'd love to go see it again.

After the show we went over to Shelly's and opened presents. A very nice and relaxing holiday.

Christmas Eve

The girls opened their traditional one gift of pjs.

Deanna got tinkerbell jammies and B'Elana got Disney Princess jammies. After presents were opened, we left Santa some cookies and milk and sent the children to bed.

Visit with Santa

After a perfectly blissful night's sleep at the hotel, we went to breakfast at Denny's. We then dropped Jason back off at the hotel and then headed out to South Town Mall to see the Big Guy. (I heard rumors he was also at Fashion Place, but we went there a couple days before and couldn't find him. Turns out he was at both Fashion Place and Gateway! Lesson learned, I suppose).

It took quite a while to actually get off the freeway, but once we were in the parking lot we were able to find a space pretty quickly. We got in there and were promptly informed that Santa was going to be going to lunch before we would be able to see him, so we settled in for a nice looong wait.

The whole area around Santa was set up as a Santa Tracking station, and they had lots of cool information about how NORAD tracks Santa on Christmas Eve.
The staff at the Santa Tracking station were awesome. Even though I wasn't purchasing pictures, they really didn't try to rush us out of there. B'Elana asked for Hannah Montana stuff and Deanna asked for a book.

Our New Holiday Tradition

We created a new holiday tradition this year. We stayed at a downtown hotel, went on a carriage ride, went to P. F. Chang's for dinner and went to the temple to see the lights.

Slagle Family Christmas

I took a lot of pictures at the party, so I decided I should do a slideshow. If anyone wants a copy of specific picture let me know and I'll e-mail them to you.

Cheerleading starts again...

The girls had their first two competitions this weekend, one on the December 13 and the second one on December 15. They did really well in both of the competitions. They got 2nd place in the first competition and 1st place in the second. The message I got from Kelsie said that the girls need to work on their jumps, so we need to make sure she's working hard on all her jumps. The next thing is the Christmas Concert on Friday, then the next competition is in January.

Festival of Trees

The Festival of Trees is one of my favorite traditions for beginning the holiday season. Seeing all those beautiful trees always puts me in a holiday mood. When we went to the Festival of Trees in Des Moines we usually ended up with a tree. We hadn't been able to do that yet since we'd gotten back to Utah, but last night Jason surprised me and when he said we could buy a tree.


I wanted to get this one:


But it was sold, and just a little out of our price range ($33,000). Check out this cool video of how it was made and the sycronized light show that went along with it.

Making of a Glass Christmas Tree from Richard Holdman on Vimeo.


Deanna would have gotten this one if it was available:

It was titled a Cullen Family Christmas...bet you'll never guess why she wanted it :)

B'Elana wanted one of these.....but alas, these were also sold.

So this is the one we saw that was still for sale, and we could all agree on:

Isn't it beautiful?!?!?