Christmas time means Christmas piano recitals! Maz did such an amazing job! She is becoming quite the pianist! So proud of her and all her hard work and practice!
The pictures for this post got all sorts of mixed up and out of order, but I don't have the patience to fix it....so there! Christmas time was a little stressful this year for us, but ended very nicely. As most of you know, Ryan was laid off the end of August and didn't find any work until the end of November, and he wasn't making hardly anything because of the training period for his new job. I was feeling a lot of anxiety just worrying about what we were going to do for our kids for Christmas. I'd finally came to terms with not getting gifts for anyone, only a few simple things for Mazzy and Bronson. Well, we were truly blessed by AMAZING and WONDERFUL family members and friends who helped us out so much! I don't think we've ever had such a big Christmas. It wasn't that that mattered to me, the "stuff", I mean, but it was the overwhelming sense of love and compassion that others had for us. It was very humbling, emotional, and sweet for me. We came home Christmas Eve night to our side door steps covered in gifts and food.....WOW, I just cried. We still have NO idea who it was, but if you are reading this....THANK YOU SO SO SO MUCH!!! Our kids were so excited by the secret Santa, they could hardly stand it! It was truly a magnificent Christmas in so many ways! I love our family and friends so much, and this year was a HUGE reminder of what blessings they are to us!!!! We love you all!!!
Christmas Eve at Grandpa Thayne and Grandma Shelly's....Christmas jammies, wahoo!
Christmas Eve we have lunch at Ryan's parents, Ray and Renee, and do family skits and open presents with everyone. This year Ry's sister Andi had us...she got the kids their very own popcorn machine!!! YAY!!! The kids were ecstatic!!!
Christmas time brought my longtime BFF Taci home to Morgan from Montana! We got to hang out a couple of times and visit and catch up! I've missed her so much and it was just like old times hanging out at my parents house on Christmas Eve together! I LOVE this girl so much!
Christmas morning, opening up a couple of presents before church....surprising Maz got a new dress and Brons got a new sweater!
Ry, opening a little present from us.
Christmas day we go back up to Morgan and visit with my Grandparents and then to my parents, where Santa leaves a toy for each grandkid to keep at Grandpa and Grandma's house! Fun tradition!
Mazryn's 3rd grade class was asked to do individual reports on different holidays around the world. Her teacher wanted the kids to do it based off of their ancestry, so Maz got Scotland. She researched and found all the information about Christmas in Scotland, wrote a report, made a poster board about the different traditions they do in Scotland for Christmas...and so on. The parents were invited for the presentations of the reports. Maz did such a great job! She learned a lot about where her Great, Great, Great, Great Grandpa Syme came from. She even showed a picture of him in his tartan to the class, while playing bagpipe music. It was pretty cool! I also got to accompany (on the piano) Maz's 3rd grade Christmas concert....I've been doing a LOT of piano playing for people this Christmas season! It's definitely out of the bag now, that I play!
This is what cousins do together for fun at Christmas time! Brons the elf, Mazzy Claus, and Stryder the red nosed reindeer! They cut these out of paper and taped them on themselves.
We had fun going to temple square with my family!
This is Mazryn, Bronson, Aidan (our cute new neighbor across the street) and Stryder. This is a picture of the New Zealand Nativity. Aidan is from New Zealand. He told us all about it....the kids thought it was way cool, so we had to take their picture together in front of it.
Here we are Christmas Eve doing our family skit "How the Ryinch Stole Christmas" All the Jones' down in Jonesville liked Christmas a lot! But the Ryinch DID NOT!!!
