Preparing for Christmas

  On Nov. 23rd, the day after Thanksgiving, we picked out our tree at a local tree lot and brought it home and got out all our Christmas decorations. Olivia was the most involved in helping, the other two mostly carried off ornaments to play with.

We picked up Hyrum from work on Friday, Nov. 30th and headed over to the Christkindlmarkt event at the the Heritage Park in SL. They had live reindeer, Christmas carolers, Christmas vendors, etc. but it was REALLY windy the night we went and we couldn't stay. We quickly peeked at the cool things being sold but because of the weather, it was in fast-forward and we were on our way.

My sister-in-law, Sherie, put together a family collage for my nephew, Elder Brad on his mission in Fort Lauderdale and this is the picture that got taken for him. Almost tempting to send out in our Christmas cards this year... :)

We made gingerbread men this year. We don't usually add that to our festivities but was inspired by Livvy's school. She learned the poem at school and had since talked about it a lot. She had fun making her own for fun.

Ella had fun too. I just let her glob frosting as she wanted on the other one.

Then we made graham cracker houses this year. I switch from those to gingerbread but these were fun this year; to collect our own candies and make our own frosting and structures. I was smarter this year to make the houses the night before so they had time to firm up and we had no problems with them not being sturdy. Daddy teamed up with Livvy and there's is very artistic and creative. I teamed with Ella and ours is a bit more...fun. I don't think this is Ella's fault at all, she should have gotten dad to help.

 On a day that Olivia was home from school we made paper santa hats. I had to make sure that Livvy understood that it wouldn't go on the head after. I used cardstock since I didn't have any red construction paper but I think it was probably better since Liv used a lot of glitter-glue.

Ella got done a lot quicker than Liv at making her hat, so I quickly cut her out a stocking. She's pretty good with glue and glitter pens.

We went to the Spanish Fork Lights on Friday, Dec. 21st, later than we usually do but the kids loved it. We went to City Creek the weekend before, on the 14th. We picked Hyrum up from work and went to the mall and then to Temple Square to see the lights. It was cold but mostly it was hard since it was raining. So we were wet and cold and had to make a quicker trip of it all.

We had some good times with the kids in the days leading up to Christmas. Like every year, I think I could've done more WITH them and FOR them. But here are some of out memories of the season this year.