The Nativity

Yes, I'm still trying to blog about Christmas in January. Every year we have the Lyman kids act out the nativity scene. Jacob is old enough now that he can read the story, while the younger kids do the acting. They all like to dress up, but having them stand all together in one place for a few minutes is very difficult. Especially with five of the kids being age 2 and under. But we do the best we can, and all of the adults enjoy watching them. We also took at cousin picture this year. Thanks to grandma and grandpa for the cute Christmas clothes!

Joseph and Mary (Teagan and Madi) - Don't they look happy!

All of the kids, at least part of them (Jacob's feet)

Two of the wise men (Quin and Jared). They were pretty happy about the presents, until they found out that they didn't get to open them.

Trying to take a picture of all of the actors. It didn't work out very well!

Mom and kids.

Pretty Angel Taryn

The Lyman cousins

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve this year, we took the kids to Ethel M. Chocolate Factory. Every year they do a bunch of Christmas lights, so we thought we would take the kids to look at them. The boys love to see the lights. Everywhere that we drove, all I heard was "Christmas lights! Christmas lights!" every time they saw them out their windows. So, we thought that having a ton of lights in one spot would be neat for them. Turns out, we were right. The kids also were able to open one present on Christmas Eve. Every year they get pj's, which is a tradition in Drew's family. This year, Teagan was old enough to realize that jammies are not his kind of gift. He made it known that he would rather have toys than jammies.

Teagan and Quin

Teagan and Quin

Mom and Taryn

The kids in their Christmas jammies.

The Santa Train

Before Christmas, the whole family went out to Boulder City to ride the Santa Train. We got out there around 1:00, and they only had tickets left for the 4:00 p.m. train. So, we had to kill some time in the big town of Boulder City. This was not very easy. So we had lunch, then drove around the town. After all of that, we still had about two hours before we could even board the train. So, we walked around the train station, and found that they had another train that we could ride. The boys really liked the train, although it was too loud for them. Taryn just enjoyed being outside. It was FREEZING the day that we went, so standing outside for two hours was not very fun. When we finally got on the train, the kids were very excited to see Santa. He even let them sit on his lap. Mrs. Claus held Taryn, which only lasted for a minute before Taryn started to scream. After all was said and done, it turned out to be a great day. I think that this will be a tradition that we do every year.

Taryn and Jamie

On one of the open-air trains.

Waiting in line for the train to arrive.

The boys with Santa.

Taryn with Mrs. Claus just before she started to scream!

The whole family on the Santa Train.

Taryn and Drew