December Festivities - Week Three!

This week was full of more fun. I started in on some serious holiday baking which is always fun and dangerous. But we like to bring treats to people and enjoy a few ourselves too. :) We brought some to our neighbors and to some Home Teaching families. Also this week was Eli's school class Christmas party. I was able to go and help out and bring Connor and Anna and then we stayed for lunch and recess which was so much fun! It was so great to see Eli at school. I've helped out a couple times, but this was the first time having Connor and Anna there and was probably the longest I've been there, so I really got to see him doing a lot. He was really excited to have us there and was a really great brother to Connor at recess. He plays soccer with a bunch of boys during recess and made sure Connor was included and had fun. It made me so proud!

 Connor and Anna insisted on bringing their backpacks to school too. :) They are cute. When we got in the car, Connor said "I wish I was in first grade". I think he's very excited to be in school with his big brother next year!

 Another awesome and hilarious thing about his school is that every Friday (or Thursday in this case, since it was their last day of school), the school janitor dresses up like Elvis and sings to all the kids during lunch. Haha, it it so fun! The kids all sing along at certain parts and he high fives everyone as he walks through the aisles and totally plays it up. It is pretty awesome. Anna wasn't too excited about all the loud noises, but Eli was singin' along having a great time.

Pre-Christmas photo. Eli loved curling up to read in front of the fire. :)

 And one of my very favorite parts of Christmas is getting cards from loved ones around the world! I ended up getting more than I could fit here, it was so fun.

Another fun tradition we've done the last few years is decorate gingerbread houses. I use the term "gingerbread" very loosely, because I actually don't go to all the trouble to make gingerbread, I just use graham crackers. My superstar sister Amy makes and cuts out gingerbread for her entire family of 8 but that sounds like way too much work to me! The kids look forward to this every year and we had a lot of fun doing it. It was hard to find good candy this year, since we don't have a place to get it in bulk, but we made do. They turned out great! Connor and Eli did theirs completely on their own and Anna just needed help putting the icing on.

 Cutie Anna knew exactly what she wanted on hers and she did a great job! Connor amazed us by doing his completely on his own, with no help. Way to go buddy!

 Aaaand here's Jeremy, still working on his after everyone else was done. Haha. His was definitely the prettiest though. Our personalities really come out when decorating these! I get mine done quickly, not caring too much about the detail, and Jeremy's is slow, thought-out, and perfect. I sure love that guy. I always say if I want something around the house done fast I do it myself, but if I want something done right/well, I ask Jeremy to do it. Patience is a virtue.

 Eli got the award for the most candy piled on! He just kept adding it in interesting arrangements. Haha.

And the last thing we did this week was host a Christmas singing party! I was so bad and didn't get any pictures!!! Ugh. I guess that's what happens when you're the hostess. My parents drove down that day, which was super fun. They brought songbooks and folding chairs, which was very helpful! I invited a bunch of people and I think we had about 40 total! A lot of those were kids, so we were very grateful for our basement. The kids played, the adults sang, and afterward we had lots of yummy food. I think everyone had a really good time. I had a few people say what a good idea it was and a couple people talked about next year, so it will probably become a tradition! I always loved doing that growing up, so I thought it would be fun to do now that we have a great house for it. We set up chairs in the living room/dining room combo and then moved to the kitchen/family room after. It was a great party!

I forgot my mom took these pictures of the kids and I decorating sugar cookies when they were here. I'm sad I didn't get them in the pictures, but here they are anyway: