It's Christmastime....

As usual, it's been a full December.  I love all the fun things happening and the great family things we get to look forward to.  Here's a small snapshot of our month:

Live Nativity--our ward holds a live nativity with a beautiful creche display inside.  Matt was a wiseman (far left standing).  

The fire department decks out one of their trucks with lights and music and tours our town over several weekends of December.  The kids were SO excited and waited all night for the truck to come.  Santa follows the truck in his sleigh.  He stopped and gave the kids big handfuls of candy.  We managed a picture too. 

curbside Santa service...perfect!

 A family photo...surprisingly not too bad

 We were out at the outdoor mall and the kids loved the huge Christmas tree.  Pictures usually turn out better when they are happy...we've done well this month

A visit to Santa's workshop at Wickham Park.  They visited with the head elf who asked if they had been good or bad and wrote down what they wanted from Santa.  They got to sit on his lap then got cookies and hot chocolate from Mrs. Claus.  The best place to go see Santa!

Family shot at the end of Santa's workshop--again happy = good picture

testing out Santa's sleigh

 Decorating Christmas cookies, a family favorite!  I can tell the kids are all getting older b/c the cookies look better every year.

Christmas PJs from Aunt Megan.  We opened them on the 22nd so the kids could wear them to Pajama Day at school on the 23rd--yes, we had a full day of school on the 23rd.

A friend of ours visits a nursing home each year on Christmas Eve and does a small Christmas program for the residents.  We joined them this year and it was so great.  It will definitely become an annual thing for us--the residents and the workers were so grateful we were there.  Lots of smiles and even tears as we visited with them and caroled in the halls when we were done.  The kids had a really positive experience.  It was a perfect addition to Christmas Eve afternoon.

For part of the program, the kids acted out of the Nativity.  Andrew was a wiseman, the girls were angels.

A fun month!!!!

Christmas Letters to Santa

The kids wrote their letters to Santa this year. So cute! Click on the image to make it larger.

Here's Whitney's:

Andrew's: ('kosboo' would be 'crossbow')

Mary's:

Annie's (as told to her dad):

Proud Mary

Mary had a great week.  There was a special Activity Day Girls activity on Wednesday.  It was a mother-daughter dinner.  We ate yummy food and each of the girls shared a scripture that they have worked to memorize.  May was really excited about this night.  We had a lot of fun.

A high school student (and amazing artist) in our ward taught an 8 week art class that Mary has been a part of.  Thursday night was their last class followed by an art show.  Mary was thrilled to get to show us all the stuff she's been working on.  She has really enjoyed these past few months and looked forward to art class each week.

Self portrait, Hogwarts style of course.  Her dream come true would be to be a real Hogwarts student.

 

Oil pastels and color wheels

Whitney had to get in on this one.

There were at least two more walls full of projects.  It was fun seeing her work.

Thanksgiving...

Thanksgiving was really great.  On Wednesday, Whit and Annie transformed themselves into chefs and were my baking and food prepping buddies.  We had a lot of fun!  Pies, rolls, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, etc.  

Wednesday afternoon I went to New Haven and picked up Megan and her boyfriend, Nate.  We ordered pizza and had fun.  Thanksgiving day we were lazy and it was wonderful.  My favorite trick is cooking my turkey the day before and then warming it in the over before we eat.  It makes Thanksgiving morning so easy!

Below is the only shot I took all weekend--pie eating.  Yummy!

Friday we went to see The Muppet Movie--we loved it!  The Megan and Nate went home Friday night but I think the kids would have been content with them staying forever (except that Aunt Megan slept on the sofa and they had to be quiet in the mornings) :).  We are all still wishing they'd come back soon!

Day at the Museum

During the Power Outage of BLAH, we took a day and headed to the Connecticut Science Center (thanks to a great friend who had passes).  The kids had a blast.  It was wonderful to have an entire day that we were out of the house and it felt normal.  We even ordered pizza that night so I had a full day of no grilling.  We did have the flash lights and the kerosene heater but there was something wonderful about a long chunk of a day being normal.

The kids LOVED the museum--we had a great day!

These girls loved the water area right at the beginning

Boat Racing

Annie kept trying to catch/reach the ball as it floated in the air.  So funny!

Car races

Space movies.  I think the chairs were cooler for the kids than the actual movies!

Experiencing a hurricane.  No thank you!

For a good 1/2 hour, all Annie did was touch animals in the water.  She was brave.