We had so much going on in the month of December, I had to go back and look through my photo files to help me remember everything we did!
My niece Marley turned 18! I threw her a party at our home. I also made her cake! I have to say, personally I think it looks like a cake for a 5 year old. She picked out the blue and yellow as the main colors and asked for stripes. One of my daughters said it looked like IKEA. So, I quickly scrapped the stripes and we went for polka-dots. It was an eight layer triple chocolate cake and wow, was it delicious!



This past holiday season I made the traditional Turner family goodies. I made white chocolate peppermint fudge, Heath Toffee fudge and Fredrick & Nelson mint Frango fudge. It is my favorite. I also whipped together three dozen Grandma Carpenter sugar cookies, a batch of Grandpa Sander caramels and four huge loaves of Swedish Bread. It was all so good. We love the holidays and these fun traditions.

One night our doorbell rang around 10pm. We opened the door to find someone had left us a Christmas surprise! The girls absolutely loved it!

On Christmas Eve, Tiffany wrote a letter to Santa and she left him a tree shaped sugar cookie and a glass of strawberry milk. We gathered at my parents home with my brother Greg and his wife Rosanne and their kids who were visiting from Pennsylvania for the holidays. After the Christmas Eve party we returned home to read from the Bible, set a Santa trap and read
Twas the Night Before Christmas! 




On Christmas morning we had time to see what Santa brought, but that was about it. Ron had Bishopric meeting and we needed to be at church by 9am. After church Dad counted tithing and we all patiently waited for him to come home from church. We finally opened gifts about 1:00. After gifts we did our annual Polar Bear Swim. OH...it was so cold outside and the water was even colder! After the swim we jumped into the spa to warm up! Then the brave souls had a great time jumping from the spa into the pool and back into the spa!

Tiffany received the bike she had been asking Santa to bring, Brianne received a pogo stick and the twins and Tori all received new hair toys!
Caitlin borrowing Brianne's pogo stick!

Lights on our home.

We celebrated Marley's 18th birthday again with her family! (Yes, this is the bottom layer of her cake from her first party. It froze very well.)

We had the family Christmas dinner at our home. It was so nice being with my brother Greg and his family.


The day after Christmas, the girls had what they called,"Post Christmas Depression". Haha! So, I looked at Ron and said,"I think we need some Mexican food. Not, just any Mexican food, but we need Casa Rio Mexican food." We just laughed and said, "Girl's go get your shoes on! We are leaving for San Antonio and the Riverwalk, within the hour!!" They looked at us like we were crazy. It is about a 3 hour drive. So, that is what we did, and it was so fun! The Riverwalk was so beautiful. They had LED colored Christmas lights strung on all of the huge trees along the river. The reflections on the river was gorgeous and yes Casa Rio, was delicious!


The SUPER chip!