Wowzers! It has been so long since I have taken time to update this here blog. This semester has been CRAZY (and I mean crazy) busy for both Oli and I.
However..... I am officially done in TWO WHOLE DAYS!!WOW! (My student teaching ends before the rest of USU ends. We officially graduate May 5th) Yes, the time has officially come for Ols and I to be graduates of the good ole' Utah State. I feel incredibly good, although  there will be more on that in another post. I want to begin updating the blog now before I get even more behind!

Here is a post from December to January:

Our Holiday:

 Oli and I had our traditional story reading from our "Christmas is the time for Sharing" book. We had cookies and read next to the Christmas tree :)

Decorating the family tree back at my parents house!

Aniston and Alayna's Christmas Tree

Mom's Christmas Tree

Decorating Sugar Cookies

Sofia's Cookies. Her cookies read"Oliver broke Sofia's heart". :)

CHOCOLATE, CHOCOLATE, AND MORE CHOCOLATE!

Iron Chef Competition as a Family!

Our secret ingredient that we were given by our judges (mom and dad) was egg WHITES. We had to have that be our main ingredient in our dessert, with a specific time limit to make that certain thing. Team One was Diana, Daniel, and I and Team Two was Sofia, Nessa, and Oli. We had an absolute BLAST! The kitchen was a disaster after we were finished, but hey, we had great dessert. We laughed so hard as we were trying to put stuff in the other team's food to try and ruin it, or get to the oven first and take as long as you could to get your things out of the oven to slow the other team down.Oh boy, we had fun. Our team made chocolate mousse and Oli's team made divinity. I honestly couldn't believe how wonderful both desserts were with such short time limit. In the end, the judges explained that we both won. (It was family home evening :)

Team Two's Divinity! Look how creative they were!

Oli explaining to the judges what they had made for the judges, in Iron Chef terms of course.

The picture above is Daniel explaining team one's dessert for the judges :)

Dad was having a hard time... anything that contains the word dessert wins with him :)

Daniel's Band Concert 

(He is in the back playing the drums)

Putting the steeple on the new Henefer Church

 Making Gingerbread Houses

Playing Games

The above picture is of Traxton and Aniston exchanging Christmas gifts. It was seriously one of the cutest things to watch them get excited about their gifts to one another. My favorite was when Aniston opened up her gift from Traxton, and Traxton was just as excited as Aniston to see what was inside. 


Oli and Aniston in their fort they made together.
She gives a big ole' smile like her auntie does :)

Grandma's Little Helper

Ice Skating!

Stephens' Family Christmas Party-2012

We act out the nativity every year and it is still one of my favorite parts of the Christmas party. Grandpa always does such a wonderful job in preparing it for us. Thanks grandpa!

Sofia the angel, and Aniston the little "baa" sheep

Grandpa, the narrator

Then Santa came to town!

Our family tradition on Christmas Eve of exchanging homemade gifts from one another. We then all  receive a certain gift from mom and dad afterwards.(It used to be pj's, however there are only so many pj's that you can own, so we have changed that tradition since:)

This year the girls got boots and the guys got fleece jackets!

Christmas Morning Breakfast! 

I loved having Christmas on a Sunday. It really put into perspective the real reason behind celebrating Christmas. It was wonderful to go to church and listen to the beautiful Christmas hymns sung throughout the entire meeting. Christmas is just special on Sunday.

Then after Church, we all came back to open gifts.

We then went over to grandma and grandpa's home and exchanged gifts with them as well.

Then it was Christmas time with the Gearys! We were so excited to see Jabin and be able to spend two weeks with him! We had such a blast! I can't say how lucky we are to have two wonderful families. We lucked out :) 

 We also played games with the Browns, and this is the one picture we got. We love you Kenny :)

 During the Christmas break, we went to Salt Lake to have some fun! It was fun to watch the little ones enjoy this fun night out! The adults had a great time as well :)

The Clark Planetarium

Here we are enjoying the beautiful Christmas lights at Temple Square. We went and had ice cream after such a chilly night out :)

Girls Lunch Date at Taggarts
I loved getting together with all of the girls and getting an update on how everybody is doing! It was such a fun thing to do over the Christmas break!

This is what I stumbled upon one day. How cute is this?

We also went bowling one night :)


Party at Cora and Ry's House! (While they were gone enjoying Mexico:)
p.s. The car was parked and we were waiting for everyone else to show up to Cora and Ry's house. We did not drive like this at all. We were just hanging out in the driveway and Mads wanted to come up to the front and sit on Uncle Oli's lap and listen to music. She then proceeded to put on the seat belt.
We just thought we would mention that so we don't have child services calling us about letting a three year old drive the car.

Jay's awesome move in Scrabble! The word he spelled was unequivocal! (With Dan's help :)

 Then is was New Year's party time! We played Dance-Dance, games, banged pots and pans, and shot off fireworks to ring in the New Year.

You can't forget kisses to ring in the new year :)

Alayna's Baby Blessing celebration!

Zach's dad with little Alayna

Zach's sister and family

The little one with her proud parents.

The proud grandparents!

The siblings love this new little addition into our family! She is such a little sweetheart! All of our nieces and nephews on both sides have brought such a wonderful atmosphere into our family. It's so fun having the little ones around, they just make everything so much more fun :)

Look at that smile!

Oli and Rochelle battling it out in the "Big Buck" game

Then we had the Nanster come up and stay with us for a weekend! We love it when she comes and visits us! It's so fun having family stay with us and see what we do up here! :)
 
 Then it was the Miss Nya Joe's Birthday in January! What a stinkin' cutie she is. It was so fun to see her open up her presents and enjoy her two year birthday party!

 Dan made the cake

Well that's December and January in a nutshell.

...Next up

February-April update! :)