Christmas Activities

We decided earlier this year that we weren't going to go anywhere for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but would spend them at home. We smoked a turkey for Thanksgiving, and had some of the traditional sides, including a pumpkin pie for dessert. It all turned out pretty well and was a very relaxing weekend.

 

 

With Thanksgiving behind us, it meant we could turn all our attention to Christmas.  We busted out all the decorations from the rafters in the garage and wasted no time putting up the tree. The girls were so excited to help put up the ornaments and Emily acted as a human spool for the lights.

 

One of the reasons I've been excited to be home for Christmas, is because it allows us to establish/continue some traditions we want to have in our family. One of the traditions Emily has started with the girls is ornament making. Last year we made some salt dough ornaments, which we colored in a variety of ways. Emily's goal is to come up with a different kind of ornament each year, and so this year we melted plastic beads into shapes using cookie cutters.

 

 Cambri's favorite part was lifting up one end of the cookie cutter and watching all the beads run out.

 Hadley, on the other hand, was taking this pretty seriously, and wanted to make sure the beads were spread evenly without mess.

We then popped these suckers on the grill for a good 20 minutes until they were all melted.

They turned out pretty good. I then drilled a hole in the tops of each one and ran some string to hang on the tree. After we did this first batch, we learned a few things about how they melted and what we needed to do to get them to fill in all corners of the cookie cutters. So we did another batch to improve on them. These were then added to the tree right next to the salt dough ornaments from last year.

Cambri seems pretty excited for Christmas.

 

LOUD NOISES!!!

 

There are few things better in life than spending a nice relaxing evening watching football with your significant other in a room filled with the light of a Christmas tree and a burning fire between hung stockings.

 

 All the fun really wore little Cambri right out.

 

Emily looked up some places we could go to show the girls some Christmas lights. In addition to driving around the neighborhoods looking at all the houses, she found a church in Everett that was putting on a drive-thru display telling the story of Christ's birth. We threw the girls in the front with us so they could see all the lights and trees, and we weaved through the parking lot listening to the nativity story. We thought it was really well done, and was a good way to really remember what this season is about.

 

As is customary each year around this time, we decorated some gingerbread houses. The girls were all about the icing and little candies.

 

They ate plenty of the candy, but were a little unsure about the gingerbread.

 

With a lot going on, we didn't really get around to doing our annual family Christmas photo, but instead, for this year, we just tried to get the best photos of the girls we could.

 

 

 

In addition to all of these activities that were captured by photos, we also did some other fun stuff that was not. We drove down to Bellevue for dinner at a Chinese/Teriyaki restaurant that has crispy gluten free chicken that Emily really likes. We then headed over to Deseret Book where we let the girls pick out a Nativity set to add to our collection. This year they chose one that was hand-carved from wood in India.

 

A couple Sundays ago we had a special stake conference with Elder Bednar. It was a good experience, and was also convenient because we could stay home and watch it virtually. This gave us some extra time in the afternoon to bake some cookies to give away. We started with the classic sugar cookie, which the girls helped cut out. Then we followed those up with some gingersnaps, snickerdoodles, and chocolate chip cookies.

For our home evening the next day, we made up some frosting so the girls could decorate the sugar cookies. On Tuesday we set out to deliver them to some families we know in the ward, and those that we minister to and should've introduced ourselves to a long time ago. Everyone seemed very grateful for the cookies and the girls really enjoyed seeing some of their friends from nursery, even if all they did was have an awkward stare-down.