A Visit from Santa

After the Nativity Pagent, there came a knock on the door, and can you guess who it was? SANTA!!! He brought presents for each child and talked to each one individually. It cracked me up when each of my children got onto Santa's lap and they totally forgot about their greedy two page Christmas Lists. When Santa asked them what they wanted for Christmas, they shyly and quietly said "books." WHAT???? What happend to the Ipod Touch, the Wii games, the DVDs, games, jewelry, clothes........??????

Nativity Re-enactment, Madsen Style

When we were kids, my parents used to dress us up on Christmas Eve and read the story of Jesus' birth from the Bible. We did it this year with all of our kids and it was so cute. I think that Jesus' actual birth was much quieter and spiritual, but we did the best we could with 9 kids under the age of 10.

Introducing Joseph and Mary


One Wise Man


An Angel with wings and a Shepard's Wife (yes, we have taken a few liberties)


Baby Jaguar's parents asked if she could participate. She added a few rejoicing howls.


And one narrator who feels she is too grown up to dress up and pretend


All gazing at the Baby Jesus. This brought back fond memories of my childhood.

From Mom and Dad

Girls, we couldn't fit this in the car for the trip, so this is one of your presents when we get back, new bedspreads and pictures for your walls. We hope you like them! Love , Mom and Dad

Christmas Traditions

Every year growing up we went out as a family and picked out a Christmas Tree together. This is the main reason why I don't break down and buy an artificial tree. I love the memories it brings back to go out and pick out a real tree and the smell of it in the house when you come home at Holiday time. I must admit that it is a much less freezing cold activity to pick out a tree in Southern California than in Utah. We picked out a cute tree this year while the kids ran wild in and out of all the other the trees on the lot. I couldn't get Jackson to stand still for 2 seconds to take a photo. Next, we always go see the lights at the temple every year. This year, instead of driving 4 blocks to see the lights, we had to drive 35 miles but as usual, the lights were beautiful. The only problem was that it was POURING RAIN the whole time we were there. Oh well, you can't have EVERY day be sunny, can you? We shouldn't be greedy.

Christmas Photos 2010

My "go-to" photographer, Lindsay, moved to AUSTRALIA this past year. Seriously, Australia?? I found a friend here in our ward who takes photos as a hobby so I asked her to shoot some of my kids for our annual Christmas photos. She did a great job and got some cute shots and was WAY more patient than I would have been.

Vasquez Rocks

We took the kids to Vasquez Rocks, a county park about 20 miles from our house. We took a picnic lunch and did a little light hiking after that. The kids LOVED IT. Jackson was so cute. He kept saying "I like this place Mommy!" over and over. We tried hiking to the top but I got too scared with the kids so we got to the top, almost. The climb down was a bit trickier than the way up. I guess we have deprived our kids of having an outdoorsy lifestyle with my strict "NO CAMPING" policy. Maybe we should make a few exceptions??? We'll have to see if I can find any campgrounds with showers, flush toilets and beds.

Allie's New Glasses

About a month after school started, the kids came home and told me that they had eye exams at school. I didn't really think anything of it until I got a letter in the mail a few weeks later that said Allison didn't pass her exam and that she needed to be taken for a comprehensive eye exam. We did that last week and sure enough, Allie is far-sighted. On Saturday she and I went to pick out glasses. These are the ones she liked the best. Doesn't she look cuter, smarter and older?