Are You Ready For Christmas Day To Come? Sing It With Me, Or if You're a Monkey Hummm.

Whew! I made it through another December! It's so much fun but so much work! The "Christmas Preparations" (all you Curious George fans can sing that song along with me now) are time consuming, a little stressful, but in the end, totally worth it. Oddly the month didn't start off feeling very December-y without a trace of snow.

 

This was our backyard for most of December. See, no snow. BUT, we do have grass!!! Halleljuah! It was a long time coming. This mama was about to go out of her mind with the amount of mud and dirt coming in on my kids shoes and dog's paws. So because there was no snow, we got grass AND cement steps AND a retaining wall AND…

 

… a trampoline! Yay for kids burning lots of energy outside!! (in our fabulous never ending fall weather!)

 

And, with no snow, we were able to get the basketball hoop in! So although we didn't have snow (for MOST of December) we didn't complain… plus we knew it was coming sooner or later.

 

So to make things feel more festive we dove into all our Christmas traditions. Like getting a Christmas tree! Bry and I had really thought long and hard about switching over to a fake tree this year. We shopped around, looked at trees in lots of stores, but in the end, I just couldn't do it. See, I grew up working on my Dad's Christmas Tree lots. Spent every December sitting on a lot, watering trees, selling trees, tying trees on top of people's cars, all while freezing my behind off and in the end, loving everything about it. So walking onto the Christmas Tree lot with my family just felt right, everything about it, picking out the tree, breathing in the smell of pine, and running my hand down the branches of a soft noble fir. I turned to Bryan and said that we just weren't going to be fake Christmas tree people.  I'm so glad he agreed.

 

 Sigh. If only real trees came pre lit.

 

 Next we spent an evening oohing and ahhing at Zoo Lights, so festive and gorgeous!  It was another night I was glad it wasn't cold enough to be snowing!



The ending of school, with holiday parities and darling school Christmas programs also hyped us up for the coming of Christmas.  Though it was about this time that I started getting a little stressed, hoping I had gotten all the shopping and planning done before I had all the troops home 24-7.



Of course we still had all the usual traditions that had to be done, like decorating cookies. This year we invited our cousins to join us in the fun.

 

Once the kids were done decorating, the serious cookie decorators took over! I've been making cookies look fabulous with these sisters of mine since we were itty bitty.

 

Another tradition, puzzles! Bryan and I both grew up doing puzzles and it's so fun to see my kids loving it too. We've graduated to the 1000 piece puzzles and got through 3 of them in the month of December.

 

 I love keeping them set up in the kitchen, in the center of our world. There is something so wonderfully cozy about yummy snacks, a fire going in the living room and a bunch of us squeezed around a puzzle.

 

It's almost as cozy as sipping my nightly hot chocolate (a habit I have had to stop because of the mounting calorie count) while watching a wonderfully cheesy Halmark movie.



Of course we watched plenty of the other Christmas classics too, all curled up together on the couch. Totally justified TV time. My man Knox couldn't get enough of Curious George Christmas. We watched it at least once a day, every single day (it's mid January and we're still watching it).



And then there's the annual Christmas party at our Nonna's house.  We always play the same SUPER FUN game.  Bunches of presents are wrapped in layers and layers of tape and wrapping paper and placed in the center of our seated circle.  We each hold hands with a partner and if we roll a double on the dice being passed around we can attempt to open one of the presents using only the free hands (the one not holding onto your partners hand).  It's pretty funny, but gets even better because if someone else in the circle rolls a double they can take YOUR almost opened present (that you've been working on for like 15 minutes).  It can get quite violent… and hilarious.  Nothing like wrestling with your aunt or cousins over a dollar store gift!

 

But my favorite part is when the little ones reenact the Gospel of Luke version of the Christmas Story while one of the adults reads it.  Often testimonies are borne and the Spirit is always so strong.

 

This year Knox must have felt a little put out by not being included in the nativity because before we knew it, baby Jesus had been replaced.

 

And the nativities continued.   If I haven't convinced you that my neighborhood is heaven on earth, how about this awesome tradition! Every year our sweet neighbor puts on a live nativity AND invites the neighborhood kids to be in it. They have a practice, hand out costumes and then perform that night.  They hold it on a Monday night so it makes for the perfect Family Home Evening.  Brans and Cason got to be shepherds.

 

Ty was the inn keeper.

 

And Tessa (can you see her squashed in the middle?) was an angel.

 

It was a beautiful performance. I'm so grateful for all the wonderful reminders of what this holiday is truly about.



We spent another Family Home Evening taking turns in the $1 Store so the kids could pick out and buy presents for their siblings.  It makes my mommy heart so happy seeing how excited they are to spend their own money on something the KNOW their brother or sister will LOVE!

 

 Now not everything we did had a Christmas tradition attached to it. There was the return of basketball,

 

for all 3 boys,

 

 so we spent the majority of our Saturdays driving to and from and watching basketball.

 

 Yes, sometimes that feels like a lot of basketball.

  

Then finally the day we had been counting down to had arrived!  Christmas Eve!  I still hadn't gotten our traditional Santa Claus picture taken so I braved the mall with my 5 littles on the last day of shopping.  The boys weren't exactly excited to see the "not real Santa" (they know he's a fraud and that real one is way too busy to be sitting in chair in the mall), but I informed them that they'll be taking a picture with this big guy until they have kids of their own.  And Knox joined the thousands of 2 year olds who are freaked out by the fact that their parents just plopped them on the lap of some scary dude in red.  I adore this picture.



Later that day it was time to go to Nanna and Gunka's house.  Nanna had put together a fun scavenger hunt that kept the kids busy while we cooked up a storm in the kitchen.



After Christmas Eve dinner we headed downstairs for our traditional Bingo game.  I never won because I was busy eating my game pieces.



Then the moment my kids have been not so patiently waiting for, time to open the family presents.  Auntie Michelle picked up these beauties in Mexico for the boys!  Naaaaaaachooooooo!  It's time for my boys to see that movie.



And of course the Christmas Jammies!



My absolute favorite thing about Christmas is being with family to celebrate.  I'm so blessed to have married into this family and to have them near.



When we got home that night we still had a few traditions to take care of.  Like opening the presents the kids had bought and wrapped for each other.  It had been a great day, but I was starting to worry that the night might be a disaster.  Knox had suddenly come down with croup and was in bed barking and wheezing.  Bryan had just been called into the hospital for an emergency.  I still had wrapping to do and Bryan had a ping pong table to put together. I was more than a bit worried!   But after a prayer things just fell into place.  I surprisingly didn't have as much to wrap as I thought, the kids fell asleep almost instantly so I could get wrapping (that NEVER happens, let alone on exciting Christmas eve night!), Bryan's emergency only took about an hour, my father in law and brother in law came to help Bry set up the table and Knox was able to breathe all night (with some help from me every hour or so).  Lots of tender mercies (click for the best article on Tender Mercies!)



Around 3am, as I was outside on our deck breathing in cold air with my wheezing baby, I saw another beautiful Christmas miracle... It was snowing!  It was like my very own Hallmark movie moment. :)  We had a white Christmas!



We started our Christmas morning with a prayer of gratitude for the Greatest Gift of All, our Savior, and then the rest of the morning was a flurry of wrapping paper, thank you's, and squeals of excitement.



Knox, like most toddlers, found the boxes to more fun than the presents themselves.  It's why he only got 2 presents.



Everyone posed with their favorite present.  Can you see a theme?   Besides the Legos that were so desperately wanted, I aimed for clutter free presents.  Most presents were things they have to use outside and require them to exert energy.



Of course with every surface currently covered in snow, the Legos won out as the toys for the day.  They took over the dining room table all day.



See, no exaggeration.  8 hours later and they're all still working on their Lego projects.



Bryan spent most of his day hunched over the puzzle.  This man takes his puzzles seriously.



So after a December with no snow, we were now definitely deep into winter. It didn't stop snowing for about a week. Great timing for our snow blower to break down. Thank goodness for lots of little hands that can help dig.

 

Thank goodness for buddies to play in the snow with!



And thank goodness for my mudroom! Much better to have wet gloves and boots on my brick floors rather than in the middle of my living room.

 

And I discovered that I'm just as in love with my neighborhood covered in the snow as I was with it draped in leaves this fall.

 

 My kids (and probably my husband) would say the greatest thing about snow is it's skiing time!  Off to the slopes they go!

 

We wrapped up the year with a few fun things.  Like a short visit from Grandpa and Grandma, who brought along a few of their amazing lemons from their mighty lemon tree.  Look at the size of that thing!  It makes the BEST lemonade.  It's like drinking summer in a cup.



We finally got around to our ginger bread (actually graham cracker) houses.  Oh the sugar rush continues.



And met up with friends who came visiting family in Utah.



We were exhausted by New Years Eve.  So we celebrated with a candlelight dinner, discussing goals for the future year with our kids and played a couple games.  Tessa made it til about 10:30.  Bryan and I crashed on the couch around 11.  Ty, Brans and Cason woke us up as they counted down the last few minutes of 2014.  Lots of kisses and hugs from my family, a very happy new year.