Meet Bubbles and BB-8

Gigi and Pop Pops came up on Tuesday to hang out with us for the day. The boys took in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and yes, that makes it my second time seeing the movie, and I'm sure not my last! The girls took in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip since Lily is in LOVE with Alvin! As if the time with Gigi and Pop Pops wasn't fun enough, they left us with some money when they left and told us to each buy a fish so meet Bubbles (blue) and BB-8 (mustard) our Betta fish!

Christmas Day

Another Christmas has come and gone and we realize just how blessed we are. We woke this morning to lots of presents under the tree, but in all honesty we were more excited to give our gifts to Mom and Dad and to each other. Don't get us wrong, we loved every gift we received, but it was so much fun to give, give, give! Once the gifts were opened it was hard to pry us away, but Grandma's house was calling. We headed up to Green Bay for the afternoon to spend time with family and to celebrate Grandma's birthday. Like usual, we had a wonderful time, and convinced AJ to spend the night with us at Grandma's. I'm pretty sure that we received everything on our wish list and then some, and we had so much fun with family that we can most definitely say that our Christmas was merry and bright!!!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is finally here and we are having trouble containing our excitement!!! We were a bit worried our celebrations would be cancelled due to a little stomach bug Lily has had for the last two days, but she pulled through today and was back to her silly old self. We went to church this evening where Lily had a solo and rocked it! We then continued with the celebrations at home where we watched The Polar Express, made reindeer food, and picked out a few cookies for the big man to enjoy! We of course couldn't forget about the reindeer, and we found some extra large carrots that they could all share. After all of the fun, we quickly jumped into bed and are looking forward to visions of sugar plums (or whatever it is eight year olds dream of) dancing in our heads!

Little Dancer

A few weeks ago I was asked to pose for some pictures at my dance studio since they are redoing their website and all sorts of fun stuff. The site isn't done yet, but this beauty is up on the schedule page.

Cookies

With only a few days to go we were getting worried that we would run out of time to make cookies, but we managed to squeeze it in today. We were especially excited about the addition of our new Mickey Mouse cookie cutter this year! We're not sure which is more fun though, decorating them or eating them!

Santa

We made the trip out to Cabela's in Richfield again this year to visit with Santa. After waiting over two hours we finally made it to the front of the line, and it was worth every minute. We always get a bit nervous once we are actually face to face with Santa, and we never manage to tell him everything we want. Good thing they let us write him a letter too to cover anything we may have forgotten!

Finding The One

This morning we kicked off the Christmas season in our house by heading out to find the perfect tree. It was Lily's year to pick it out and I must say that she found a beauty. Grandma even came along this year after making a last minute trip down to visit and make caramels. Lily had asked a few times and I guess her persistence paid off because after tree hunting we managed to make four trays of caramels. We're off to a good start and can't wait to see what the rest of the holiday season has in store!!!  

Gingerbread House

Now that we are eight we were given the box and given free reign to decorate it however we saw fit...not bad if I do say so myself!

The Bigger The Bear...

...the less chance that we'll get to bring it home, but at least I can take a cute picture with it!!!

Rivera Christmas

We celebrated Christmas at Gigi's and Pop Pops' this morning enjoying two of our favorite things...food and presents! Every gift we opened earned an audible gasp as we loved each and every thing. We loved Marc's and Landon's presents too, and enjoyed playing with them (so much so that Marc and I were sweating like crazy)!

Thankful

We headed to Illinois for Thanksgiving again this year. We always enjoy hanging with our cousins, and this year was no different. Lily and Ava always enjoy their "girl time", while I was the head chicken this year...wherever I went Logan was right behind me with Carter bringing up the rear.