Christmas Time Is Here!

We've had a busy week!  Monday morning, the younger kids went to Sister Shum's Christmas music camp and had a great time!  On Monday night, we had our annual Bagna Caulda party with carol singing.  The carol singing part was especially wonderful and the Bagna Caulda came out good!  One of my favorite moments was sitting at the piano surrounded by my kids and their friends and our friends all singing the 12 Days of Christmas at the top of our lungs!  It was wonderful!!   We had a great time with friend and family.  Sandi and Taz and Kai were also able to stop by for a bit after getting home from Texas.  

Tuesday was recovering from Monday.  The kids had been up late and we had worked hard cleaning the house and cooking food and getting everything ready, so we were all tired on Tuesday.  The kids had been a ton of help!  

Wednesday was spent getting things ready for Christmas and the kids decorated gingerbread houses.  Nothing fancy, just the ones from the store, but they had fun and made cute houses!  

Thursday morning, we met up with Sandi and the kids and Dan took a break from work to join us at the Ice Skating rink.  The kids all had a blast, but after an hour and a half, most of the kids were tired, sore or ready to do - except James who could have kept going all day.  He LOVED it - he had Taz had a blast falling on purpose and sliding on the ice and skating.  

While the older kids were still skating and David had gotten tired of it, Dan took David to see Santa who was right next to the rink.  David loved it!  He had such a great time chatting it up with Santa.  James and Evelyn wanted to see him too after we were done.   After, we got some lunch at the food court, then headed home. 

Friday was Christmas Eve.  We finished getting some things ready and doing some grocery shopping to get us through the weekend.  Then we had a wonderful evening reading the Christmas Story and the kids opened their Christmas Eve gifts.  The kids loved the pajamas that Dan picked out for them!  David was especially cute as a baby shark! 

Christmas morning came bright and not too early (thankfully) and we headed down the stairs to open presents.  We took our usual break for breakfast after opening the stockings and then we finished with the rest of the presents.  The kids had a great time and we had a fun little chat with Grandma and Grandpa Jones.  Then we spent the rest of the day playing with our gifts and having a fun time being together.  

Grandma and Grandpa Cox flew in that evening, but they got in late and went straight to Sandi and Jon's, but we are glad they are here safely and look forward to seeing them! 

We got a bit of snow in the evening, but it didn't seem like it would be enough to stick, but Sunday morning, we woke up to about an inch of snow on the ground.  The kids  took the sled and had a blast on the hill until the snow had mostly melted off the streets.  

Church was cancelled, so we did a church lesson at home today which was really nice and had a fun time singing songs together and learning about the Gifts that Christ has given to us.  

In the afternoon, Grandma and Grandpa and Sandi and Taz and Kai came over to hang out and chat.  We had a fun time and Sandi and I managed to sneak away to finish up Dad's present.  The kids always have a blast together and it was wonderful to see my parents and to get to our house to my Dad!  

No More School!

We've had a fun week full of music and fun.  The kids have mostly had a fun week at school.  Eileen has been working like crazy to get her school stuff done so that she is ready to start early college in January.  She did manage to get all her ceramics stuff done which is good and was the thing that was stressing her out the most because she had the least control over it.  She got them done and back home and we've been having fun using them around the house!  We put dip in her big bowl and used the smaller ones and dip bowls for a finger food night!  

David's preschool group has had a wonderful week full of donating food and giving gifts and making Christmas Crafts (including his new favorite jingle bell necklace) and singing Christmas songs.  Plus he used his Pajama Day coupon to wear his monkey pj's to preschool.  He loved it! 

On Tuesday, Dan and I went to watch Anna perform in the school Yuletide concert.  It was a lot of fun and the band sounded amazing!  She was a little hard to find since she was mostly behind people from where we were sitting.  But we had a great time! 

The kids had a great time at their youth activity.  The young women got to go watch Encanto in the theater and Eileen and Anna have been talking about it ever since.  (Anna was at her second night of concerts.) 

David was so proud of this domino building he made that he demanded that both Dan and I come and take pictures of it so everyone could see how awesome it was!  

 Saturday was busy, but fun!  Eileen and Anna and I went out for an outing.  Eileen and Anna wanted to find some primer for their makeup adventures, and we went to a sushi place for lunch, and did a bit of Christmas shopping.  Then we got home and Dan and I went out for a bit more shopping (mostly grocery though) and then we headed home for a fun evening!  

Today was a wonderful sabbath!  Our ward had our Christmas program today.  Evelyn was asked to help out with the primary song since the girl who was playing the flute was sick :(  She was happy to serve and did a wonderful job too - she also played with the choir.  Eileen and Anna and I also sang with the ward choir and it was a wonderful program of music and scripture!  Then we had the primary time - lots of fun Christmas songs and fun plus a wonderful Christmas video and story for the lesson.  After church, Dan was running around visiting people in the ward, and I stopped by a couple people's houses to drop off some stuff from the primary, and had a fun time chatting with them too.  :)  

Christmas Fun!

 We have had a fun and busy week with a lot of the usual.  Monday, I finally started working on getting our Christmas cards out, so Monday night for family home evening, we all got in our onesie pj's (well Dan is wearing some of mine...) and took our family picture for the Christmas card.  I think they came out cute!  

On Friday night, we went to Lightopia - it was a fun light show up in Hillsboro, we drove around in the van looking at tons of fun Christmas lights and listening to Christmas music!  The kids all seemed to have a fun time, so it was a great little evening activity!  

Saturday was a bit busy.  I took James to get his second Covid vaccine shot - his arm is a bit sore, but he is otherwise feeling good!  It went pretty quickly and then we headed home for lunch and then COOKIE MAKING!  We had our great cookie cook off and made and decorated tons of cookies!  We are looking forward to passing them out on Monday!  Some of the kids had friends over to decorate with us and we had a noisy and fun afternoon. 

In the evening was Dan's company party.  We had a fun evening and a fun time chatting and eating.  The party was over at 8:30, but after that Dan and I were both rather tired, so we headed home and to bed!  

Church today was wonderful - I helped out in Nursery since we didn't have enough leaders - it was fun, and a bit of an adventure.  :)  

Christmas is Coming!

 We started our week off with a Family Home Evening of decorating our Christmas Tree.  We had a fun evening putting up ornaments and drinking eggnog and listening to Christmas music!  David helped me during the day with putting up some of the other decorations, and Dan got lights up this week, so all in all, it's beginning to look like Christmas at our house! 

We have had a busy week with school and activities and friends.  Eileen is in the ensemble for the High School's latest production, so she had rehearsals.  Anna has swim practices and music stuff and leadership stuff.  James has a standing date to meet up with some friends from school at the park a few times a week when the days aren't rainy.  David and I spend our days playing and walking and running errands.  

On Saturday was the ward Christmas party.  It was a brunch and it was a lot of fun.  Eileen went and helped with the decorating on Friday night and it looked amazing in the gym.  The kids had a ton of fun - especially with all the balloons.  The primary kids got to sing, and I was asked to sing O Holy Night to close out the music program.