Christmas!!

Finally...here's my post about Christmas!

Christmas Eve

I can't remember what we did during the day exactly.  I'm sure I was helping kids finish up their homemade presents  for our exchange that night or cleaning or making cookies for the kids to decorate for Santa.  I know Garrett made Christmas dinner.  

Jim and Georgia came over in the early evening and I think we ate dinner around 5 or 5:30.  I only got one picture of dinner and it's just of the table.  :)  We had our usual ham dinner with green bean casserole and cream cheese potatoes.  Georgia brought a red hot Jell-o salad and a pumpkin roll for dessert.  

After dinner, I had the kids decorate sugar cookies for Santa so we'd have something to leave out for him.  I don't know what I did all December because this year, we never got around to baking any goodies for delivering--so sorry everyone! and we never got around to making our gingerbread houses either.  I'm very sad about those.  I kept saying I'd do it after Christmas, but it never happened then either because we were busy redoing Lydia's bedroom.  (more on that later).  

After cookies were done, then we all found "costumes" and acted out the Nativity.  Lydia had us draw names to decide who would be what.  Everyone wanted to be Mary.  

 Group shot--Mindy (wiseman), Georgia (shepherd), Garrett (wiseman), Jim (wiseman), Maggie (narrator and angel), Noah (shepherd), Bella (Joseph), Paige (Mary) and Lydia (donkey)

 Joseph with Mary on the donkey, riding into Bethlehem

 Baby Jesus had arrived

 Shepherds coming to see the baby after seeing the angel

 I thought Noah looked so cute as a shepherd

 Being silly

Wisemen waiting their turn

Then we watched the Bible videos of Christ's birth and sang Silent Night.  

Then, we let the kids open their jammies from Grandma and Grandpa Hansen.

Loving their new jammies.

After this, they each got to open one present.  We drew names amongst the 5 of them and they had to make a gift for that person.  I bought them whatever supplies they needed, but it had to be made by them. It was quite fun coming up with ideas that their person would like.  It kept me busy helping them all.  I guess I had Garrett help Noah with his.

 Noah got to open his present first.  Bella drew Noah's name.

 We made a car mat for him to play on.  He has tons of cars and I've been wanting to make him one anyways.  So, I drew it and Bella colored it.  She had so much fun coloring it for him.  It has a construction area with a lake, a church, some stores, a police station, gas station, a school and a fire station.  

 Bella opened hers up next.  Hers was from Lydia.  

 Lydia made her 2 things.  First, she learned to sew a scarf for Bella.  She had never sewn before, so I showed her how.  She picked out the material and pinned it together and sewed it.  I had to fix a few mistakes, but that's all part of learning.  I thought it turned out cute.  It's pink minkee on one side and brown, blue and pink striped on the other.  

 Then, she made a puzzle for her.  Well, she drew it on a blank puzzle that I already had.  She drew a cute picture with Bella's name on it and all her favorite things.  

This is a picture of it.  Bella loves puzzles, so it seemed perfect.  

 Paige was next.  Her gift was from Maggie.  Maggie went to town on her gift. 

 She spent HOURS making hair accessories--headbands, bows, clips, etc.  And then, she made a bunch of earrings for Paige.  Paige was in heaven!

 These are some of the hair things that she made...I couldn't find all of them.  The one she's wearing in the picture above is a really fancy one for dress up with lots of pretty beads on it.

and some of the earrings.  Paige loves the dangly ones.

 Lydia's turn.  Her present was from Noah.

Since she just got a camera for her birthday, they found a photo album for all her pictures and decorated it with stickers and playmobile people (since she really likes playmobile).  And they printed off some pictures for her to put in the book.

 So cute!

This is the photo album --I just took a picture of it.  Not sure where the 2 playmobile characters are.  The dog is still there though.  :0)

And Maggie was last.  Hers was from Paige.  Paige also made two gifts.  Her first one is a frame that she decorated with scrapbook paper and printed off a picture of Maggie to put inside.

Her second gift was a mug that she decorated with sharpie markers.  I found this on pinterest and thought it was cool.  You are supposed to bake it afterwards so that the marker is set and doesn't wash off, but for some reason, the marker still washes off after baking it twice.  I can't figure out why.  Oh well.  She liked it and continues to use it, we just have to be careful when we wash it.
After all the presents, it was getting close to 9, so we set out some cookies and milk and sent the kids off to bed.  They were so excited!  Christmas is so fun!
Garrett and I stayed up watching 'A Christmas Story' while we wrapped a few gifts.

Christmas Day
We always tell the kids to not wake us up before 7--and they rarely get up before then.  One year they woke up at 6:30.  This year it was like 7:30 when they woke us up.  Nice!  Jim and Georgia came over at 8 to join in the opening of presents.

 Waiting to go downstairs!!  I'm just going to put some pictures up from the morning without describing each picture.

 after opening presents, we ate breakfast and then played...

We watched Despicable Me 2 and Planes--the kids got them for Christmas; we talked to family members and just enjoyed the day.
More to come on the rest of 2013...

Pre-Christmas Activities

Dec. 19th was Noah's Christmas Activity at his preschool.  It was very simple and short compared to what Wonder World usually does.  They sang about 5 or 6 songs.  Noah of course didn't sing at all, just stood there.  It was cute though.  His class is so small--about 12 in there, I think that they combined with the other preschool class to sing their songs.  But even then, they were still really hard to hear on some of the songs.  

 Noah and his buddies next to him--Ethan and Cooper.  

After the singing, they had donuts for the kids to eat, but Noah didn't want one, so we just hung out until they had the craft ready.  Each family got to make a Santa Claus Craft to take home.  

 Gluing the eyes on

 Showing me the red nose

 all done!

 Noah's pretty good at sitting still for a picture, but the other 2 were pretty funny and kept moving around.  These were the best pictures I got.  

Noah loves his preschool and was kind of sad that there wasn't any school over Christmas break.  He was so excited when it started again!

That night, there was a Relief Society Christmas activity that I went to.  It was fun--there was a White Elephant Gift Exchange, Cookie Exchange, Toy/Clothing swap, ideas for stocking stuffers and hot chocolate.  

Dec. 20th

Last year, I found an idea on Pinterest to have a "Grinch Night".  I wanted to do it last year, but never got around to it.  So this year, I was determined to go through with it.  I told my kids earlier in the week that we were going to have a Grinch night and watch the animated show and have dinner.  They kept thinking it was a Grinch party with games and stuff.  I didn't want them to be disappointed when there were no games--so I kept emphasizing the "dinner and a show" part.  Anyways, I planned it for the last day of school before Christmas Break.  So, I spent all day cooking the food.  My kids love it when I print off coloring pictures for them off the internet.  We've done Halloween pictures, Thanksgiving Pictures, Christmas pictures, etc.  So, I had printed off some Grinch pictures for them to color after they came home from school.  I also found these cute props for taking pictures, so I printed them off and let the kids take pictures while I was finishing things up.  

 Lydia

 Bella

 This one of her cracks me up.

 Noah  :)

 Paige

 She is such a goof ball--such an actress

Anyways...we had way too much fun with these.  I had a Grinch craft for them to do, but we took too long with the props, so didn't get around to it.

Maggie wasn't home because she chose to go to the movies with some friends instead.  It really kind of made me sad realizing that my kids are getting older and pretty soon none of them are going to want to participate in my silly parties anymore.  It was a hard moment for me.  I'm fine and I know that I have little ones still that will want to participate for awhile, but still hard knowing that my daughter would rather hang out with friends.  I have to keep reminding myself that she is almost 14, so this is completely normal!!  :)

Anyways, enough boo-hooing and back to the dinner...

I wanted to have "roast beast" for dinner and have it actually look like a 'beast'.  I was thinking about cooking a ham, but we were going to have ham on Christmas, so then I thought about having a whole chicken.  We had this a lot growing up, but I have never cooked one in my adult life because I'm afraid of cleaning out a chicken.  Well, Garrett wasn't going to be home when I had to get it in the oven, so I had to do it myself.  Let me tell you, it was not a pleasant experience.  I had Lydia trying to help me get all the inside parts out and all the little kids were watching and being grossed out.  Maggie was snapping pictures on her ipad from across the room.  

We got it done and in the oven.  It wasn't as good as I remembered...I should've had a little gravy with it.  Anyways, here's the food on the menu:

 Roast beast

 Who Hash (Potato, cheese and sausage casserole)  Good!

 Who Punch (Lime sherbet and sprite)

 Who Pudding (Rice pudding--actually from the Dr. Suess website--and really good)

We also had Grinch Green beans, but didn't get a picture.

 Grinch Cookies (Mint Sugar cookies)

 Getting ready to eat

Loving the Who Punch!

After dinner, we watched the show and then I had some Trivia Questions to ask them about the movie when it was over.  It was fun to do something different and the kids liked it.  

Dec. 21

The next day, Paige and I went to one of her friends/classmates (Bryden's) baptism at 2 pm.  Afterwards, were meeting up with Jim and Georgia at 5 Guys Burgers for an early dinner and then we were off to the Zoo to see the Zoo Lights.  It was cold, but not too bad.  The lights were beautiful!  The train wasn't working that night, so we were all a little sad about that.  

 Lydia took most of the pictures of the lights.  

 The train was lit up, but not running, so we took our picture by it. 

 Watching the new baby elephant, Lily

 Riding the Lions

Afterwards, we went to Burgerville for Peppermint shakes and french fries.  

Fun night!