Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas this year!! We decided to stay home and have our own family Christmas for the first time. It was just too much to plan a trip, find a place for the dog to stay, and find a way to pay for it. I'll be honest...I LOVE Christmas with just our little family! It might be hard to convince me to go anywhere again. It was just so fun and relaxing for us.

Our whole week was busy and fun. On Sunday, we had the ward Christmas program that Will was in charge of. I helped a lot behind the scenes to get everything set, like music copies, new binders for everyone, things like that. But Will put everything together and it turned out great! We had four choir songs, one solo, one instrumental, and one a cappella group. Lots of fun and I had a friend and a young woman sit with our kids so that we could both be a part of it and not stress about the kids. It worked out well.

Monday I made some Christmas treats, although this year I was lame and didn't give them to neighbors. I was completely planning on it, but I realized I had nothing to deliver them in and honestly just felt a bit lazy! Hopefully next year I'll be better about doing that. :) I also went to a friends' house and played the piano while she played violin and recorded it for her parents, who are serving a mission.

Tuesday I made tons of cookies and we cleaned the house, and then had a big Christmas Eve dinner. We opened some presents - pajamas for Will and me, and new blankets for the kids. We also got Miracle on 34th Street, watched that and had hot chocolate. That's one of my favorite Christmas movies.

And of course Wednesday was the big day! Since we decided to stay home and Will got a last minute Christmas bonus we were not expecting, we had more presents than I thought we would! It was pretty fun, even though maybe that makes me sound shallow and materialistic. ;)

In the afternoon on Christmas we had dinner with our good friends, the Tanners. They're becoming like family to us here and we love it!

On Friday, since the weather was so nice, we went to Blue Heron Park. It's a park here that's only a few blocks away with a little playground, a pond and a path around the pond. There are TONS of geese there right now, it was pretty noisy. It was really funny to watch them fly and land on the ice, they were slipping and sliding everywhere. If you've never seen a goose slide all over ice, you're missing out. :)

We brought Ginny along too, and I think she had a good time.

What a fun week!!

Gingerbread house

So recently I discovered a difficulty I have with children. I always have these somewhat romantic notions when it comes to Christmas (and sometimes other things). For example, I thought about how fun it would be to have a night where we decorate the Christmas tree, put on Christmas music and drink hot cider. Instead of being a fun, relaxing evening, half of us were sick, Ben wanted to throw the ornaments (BALL!) and only Kaylee and I enjoyed the cider. The dog was crazy and there was way too much yelling involved. Somehow I feel like other parents do better at having fun during times like these, and I'm too uptight and just need to R-E-L-A-X. Hope I'm not the only one. :)

We made a gingerbread house today and I promised myself to just let the kids have fun, and not try to take over and want it all perfect. Do you guys know how hard that is for me??? Seriously. (I have issues.)

But we had a great time! The only problem was whiny Ben, but he's pretty much whiny all the time because he's not sleeping well at all lately. He just wanted to eat ALL the candy, of course - very much expected. He actually did pretty well at helping put candy on the house too, so it worked out alright and I think we all had fun!

I did it.

I finally came up with a solution to my Christmas tree dilemma! It was really getting so depressing, I was so sad about my poor, poor Christmas tree. Every day another ornament (or several) would have to be moved up to the top, or be completely destroyed by the dog. This is what my tree looked like...

SO SAD! I wanted to cry every time I saw it. Ben kept grabbing the garland and pulling out the tinsel strands, and he kept reaching higher than I expected and getting the ornaments. So frustrating. It was also sad because I really only had some blue and silver balls I bought, we got rid of our old ornaments (nothing special) when we moved and I didn't buy much this year.

I came up with this (slightly ghetto I suppose, but better ghetto gate than ghetto tree!):

Yes, we had an old door in our garage from when we changed Kaylee's door out, and it just happened to be a perfect fit! I just sectioned off the entire living room.

I had to use a bit of creativity for this part. A clasp, a hook and eye without the hook, a very large washer and a screw from an old hinge. Yep, it's...interesting. But it WORKS! It's easy to unhook, and I can slide the whole thing behind the piano when I don't want it. The kids and the dog pretty much just leave it alone when it's closed, and I can open it when we want to use the room or when we have company. Today I finished decorating the tree. Now it's beautiful, I can have presents under it, and nobody can get to it unless I allow them. It works really well because we don't use that room much anyway.

 Since I had hardly any ornaments, I spent the last couple of days making some. I made a dozen of these little guys:

And some of these, with salt dough, spray paint and glitter. Juvenile?? Perhaps a bit, but that's okay. I just needed SOMETHING.

I also went to the park today and picked up some pine cones to make these.

It was 65 degrees and sunny today. It's weird to me that people say the winters here are bad, because nowhere in my mind does "65 degrees," "December," and "bad winter" go together. It just...doesn't. Anyway, we had a GREAT time at the park! And I really wore Benjamin out:

Neither of my kids have ever fallen asleep at the high chair before. He didn't have a nap today and was apparently extremely tired! Poor kid just couldn't get comfortable.

(He was asleep the entire time in the video)

Christmastime!!

My favorite time of year!! We started decorating on Black Friday, of course, like we always do. We got a tree on Saturday and...it's still not done. Decorating a tree with two young kids, a puppy, and a kitten is rather frustrating. Kaylee is the only one that "gets" it, and she STILL has a hard time leaving the ornaments on the tree. More often though, it's her saying "MOOOOOMMY!! Ben is messing up the tree!!!!!!" And Ben just points at the tree excitedly saying "BALLS!!" And then picks his favorite and throws it as hard as he can, and the dog attempts to eat it. It's quite a party.

 

I realize this is not the best picture because it's too bright outside, but you get the idea. I'll get some better pictures when we have it finished. Although I don't know if I'll bother if I can't have any ornaments within 3 feet of the floor! Maybe I'll just call it good right now. :)

And here is my Christmas mantel. Okay...I know the stockings are super ghetto. They might have been $1 at Target. I don't know what kind of stockings I really want, so I can't shell out a bunch of money for stockings I'm not in love with, I'll just have to wait till I find the right ones! And yeah...I don't have fancy stocking holders either. Maybe next year?? Then I can stop poking holes in everything.

We got SNOW!!! It's so pretty, I love snow. (In December.) So anyone who wanted to see our house who hasn't seen it yet...there it is! We like her. We're not doing a whole lot of decorating outside this year. I would love a big wreath above the garage, and some Christmas lights, but for now I'm sticking with my green garland and red ribbons!

I did something a little different with our pajamas tradition this year. Normally we do pajamas on Christmas Eve, but this year I got some Christmas themed pajamas for the kids. I love Christmas pjs, but I didn't want to give them on Christmas Eve, then they can only wear them for a little while before it's weird. So this year, I gave them the day after Thanksgiving, so at least they can wear them for the season. I think they're so cute!

I even got them both sort of smiling. SHOCKING!! I'm glad Ben didn't do his "tough-guy" face like he normally does for pictures.