Merry Christmas!! December is here. I knew that with Thanksgiving being late Christmas would sneak up pretty quick this year and it has. SO BUSY! I have made a point the last few years to make an effort to not over pack the activities and that has been the plan this year. There just is a bunch of stuff going on this time of year between, regular schedules, end of year stuff, plus holidays. So it has still been busy but I am enjoying it. I have cut out a lot of family activities. We still do stuff together but I have just done the things that the kids have brought up and wanted to do. So some of our favorite activities this December have been wearing our PJ’s grabbing some hot chocolate and driving around looking at Christmas lights, watching a Christmas movie together (Elf and the Santa Claus movies 1-3 with Tim Allen are our favorites) We read my awesome Christmas book collection together a lot too. We decorated a ginger bread house too.
I have not done our White Elephant Christmas party that we did for years last year or this year. It is was fun to do but I am enjoying not doing it more. Ha! We simplified our treats for neighbors and friends this year too. Instead of making chocolate pretzels and other treats we put a note on a bottle of sparkling cider that said “Pop! Pop! Fizz! Fizz! Oh what a good neighbor you is!”
Some of the other fun things we have done is the girl scout holiday party. I am still a troop leader for Emilee’s troop so I was with them, but Allison was there too.
Our Elf Bubbit came. The girls always want him to come the day after Thanksgiving but Bubbit is one of Santa’s special elf helpers so he has to stay and help Santa until at least the 10th. Since we will be out of town this week Bubbit was able to come a few days before that. Emilee is our elf spotter. She can find him faster than anyone. She likes to leave him notes too.
The girls and I went on a neighborhood hay ride too. Allison wanted to have a seat at the front of the wagon with her friends but Emilee and I decided to sit at the back which worked out great because the second set of horses liked to be right behind the first so we could basically touch them. The girls sat on Santa’s lap afterwards too.
I sang with a group in the Relief Society Christmas activity. It has been a long time since I sang. It was a little stressful getting parts worked out. We originally started with 10 singers and ended up with only 5. We sounded good and it was fun though.
Ryan and I were put on the Ward Christmas Party planning group. We were in charge of Santa and his room and then activities to entertain the kids. The whole party went really well. Santa came with a Mrs Claus that was grumpy and I honestly would have liked to cut her out of all the pictures but it all worked out. The kids loved all the crafts, dinner was yummy, decorations were awesome. The person in charge of the program had a lot of primary kids play the piano, the ukulele, or viola, or sing a song. It was really fun.
Emilee and I went to one of the Highschool choir concerts. They sang a lot of fun songs. A lot of the songs they sang were ones I sang when I was in choir TWENTY years ago. Uuuuummmm, I just realized when I typed that my 20 year high school reunion is this summer! Wow that is crazy. Anyway, I digress. We all went to Leah’s choir concert as well. She is in a choir called Allegro. It was very nice. There is several different choirs and they all sang some very good Christmas songs together.
We had our first snow day for school this month. They cancelled church because we had a big snow storm and then school on Monday was canceled too. The cousins got to sled together for a few hours and we ended up with about 5 inches of snow. It was a fun winter treat before we head to Florida for Christmas.
