Happy New Year!

New Years Eve... What to do??? We ask this question every year? We want to celebrate but it's hard with our demographics (ages ranging from 1 to grandparents). So we have kind of come up with a tradition. Movie, dinner and then hang out at home and play games or just hang out. The hard part is that we end up being tired and struggling to make it to midnight. 

The movie we saw this year was:

And it was hilarious!!!

We saw it with my parents and cousins (Zildy and Jonas didn't join up with us until after the movie).

We ate at the Training Table 

My beautiful sister Zildy was getting her hair done and that's why she didn't see the movie. 

Cute Zuri 

And the boys: 

And here we are :)

We had K hang out with us for about two weeks during the break and it was great having her home for that long. 

G had enough and just crashed! 

2014 pictures at a glance made by Google. 

This is a video of 2014 made by Google. I wanted to edit it but I could not figure it out so it is what it is. Enjoy!  Year in Photos 2014

G 8th Birthday

December 27, 2008

The day began with the traditional breakfast at IHOP. She has been choosing to go to IHOP for her birthday for a few years now. We'll see how long it lasts? We had to go a little early because S worked that morning and we wanted everyone to be there.

That afternoon she had a party with her friends from school. This is the pinata she chose. 

The girls made some bracelets with beads. 

Here's the birthday girl with her friends. 

The hit of the party was the facepainter (K). We had planned a game of pin the horn on the unicorn during the facepainting so the girls woudn't just wait in line. But they hurried and did that so that they could go back and watch the facepainting. 

The pinata in the garage. It was sooo cold in there but it was warmer than outside. 

Opening presents 

The girls decorated cupcakes and then ate them. 

We then played a game of freeze dance while we waited for parents to come pick up the kids. 

The next day we celebrated G birthday with the family. 

She chose a My Little Pony Cake. No surprise there!

More presents... She still hadn't even opened all of her presents from us because she had been opening so many every single day this week. So we decided to spread it out and have her open a present a day for her birthday week. 

And here she is... Our beautiful G. She is now 8 and will be getting baptized in a week. G brings so much joy into our lives. She is so caring, loving, sensitive to the needs of others and creative. It's fun to still have a child in our home. I thank Heavenly Father everyday for granting me this blessing after waiting so long for her to join our family. 

Christmas 2014

Christmas Eve was spent at our house. We once again did our Back to Bethlehem Dinner where we eat paches, bread, and food that may have been had in Bethlehem. I think this allows us at least a few minutes of reverece and pondering of that Silent Night so long ago. 

Afterewards we waited for the traditional Christmas Program to begin.

Carina received this scarf as a gift from Crystal. She had just come home because she had to work on Christmas Eve so she was a little excited to see us (or at least that's the story I'm sticking with). I love my dad because he is always having fun with us.

These are the guests of honor. Waiting for the program to begin and to give them the gift that we all worked so hard to put together. We all love "my" parents so much and we are thrilled to be able to work out this 50th Anniversary Reunion for them! And look at how good looking they both are!

This is the program and a few pictures:

We skyped with the Boston Fajardo's and Julio called in so for a few minutes we were all together on Christmas Eve. As far as I could tell my parents loved their gift!

This is what Santa left. CR got coal in his stocking!!!!? I wonder why??? But Santa could just not be that mean and just left him a note of where his gift was left. This was for the four older kids.

This is G's.

Christmas morning...

I love these five children/adults!!! Christmas morning and being together as a family make all of the crazyness of getting ready during December all worth it! I am so blessed to be their mom and to hopefuly teach and guide them in the right path wihile here on eath.

All of the presents:

Just chillin with her Snakeez (one of her favorite presents). From Santa she got: 

My Little Pony Princess Twilight Sparkle Friendship Rainbow Kingdom

 

K got a nice camera.

C got a new laptop

S got a guitar

CR got a bluetooth speaker

Christmas Day was a the Manuel's.  We had Shrimp Etouffee with rice and KC's famous egg nog.

We then went to see Annie all together. We came back opened presents and had a hot chocolate bar.

Zuri was sick and it was sad to see her not happy.

The boys.

Early December 2014

After Thanksgiving it was just time to get ready for Christmas. There is always so much to be done... present shopping, decorating, parties, neighbor gifts, making sure the family is remembers the true meaning of Christmas, and if that wasn't enough life continues and we still have to work, do homework, take care of the house, clean, cook, church callings, etc. I love this time of year but it definetly is a busy one.

The ward missionaries were put in charge of the ward Christmas party. We decided to make some music videos including all of the ward members. This meant that we had to divide up the ward areas and convince all those in our area to sing part of a Christmas song on camera so that later we could edit and put together these videos for the ward to see at the ward party. Amy (my companion) spent many hours going to neighbors houses to video them. It was a great day to get to know our neighbors! This is not something that I am comfortable doing in any way, shape or form but I did it because it is my calling and because I know that I need to be better at reaching out to my neighbors.



We also had the youth do a flash mob at the shopping center so we could record it and show it to the ward. It was a fun activity for the youth and everyone involved.



Another tradition that we started this year that we would like to continue is that we invited all of our neighbors (just our cul-de-sac) for a short gathering at our house. We had cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate and just gathered together. We seem to not see many of our neighbors because some are not LDS so we don't mingle at church but we decided this is a way to jut get together at least once a yer.

This is G with Santa:

C's childhood friend Jeanice came home from her mission in Japan and we got to go listen to her homecoming talk. These girls grew up together and now are all in college and busy with life but they are awesome friends.

My work Christmas Party. A little crazy but fun!

Time for a selfie. I think we were just snapchatting C.

We filmed a music video for the Fajardo grandparents to announce to them a reunion with everybody for their 50th wedding anniversary in 2015. K put together a video from 4 years ago when we were together and then we made this other video. 

This is S's crazy hairdo for our portion of the filming.

And a panda bear :)