In the Christmas Spirit

We had a lot of Christmas fun over the past month or so.   Here are a few pictures from our Christmas adventures. Matthew and Anna helped put together our stocking advent garland.  We added a few candies in each stocking and numbered the clothespins that hold them up. 

 

Nice and easy.

 

 Matthew with his Lego advent calendar  There is a little door in the box for each day and inside a little Lego item to put together and once you get them all together they make a little Lego scene.  Fun.  Anna had a playmobil one that was similar.

 I think that's a Lego chainsaw he's holding.

 The kids left out their shoes on December 5th for Sinterklaas

It looks like Sinterklaas left some Lego (and Hello Kitty) minifigures in their shoes!

 A live Christmas tree came as a gift for my parents - thanks Aunt Janet! The kids were enthralled.

 Making gingerbread men

And decorating them

 Good job guys

Now the eating part.

 Yum!

I was in charge of Anna's preschool winter party this year.  It went well.  Here are the kids making snowflake bead ornaments.

 And decorating some gingerbread men

We did lots of gingerbread this year.

 Our stockings were hung by the chimney with care

Can you see our Elf on the Shelf?

And Anna, our little artist, drew this picture of our fireplace.

I thought she did a good job

 And Matthew's school Christmas party was snowed out so we had one of our own at home.

We did a lot of activities including dressing the kids like Christmas trees.  :)

 Maybe not one of our greatest ideas, but still fun.

And Grandpa came into town on our snow day.  Here he is helping the kids make their popsicle stick Christmas trees.

 Very blingy

And then there was the gingerbread house.  My mom gave us some fun gingerbread house cookie cutters and helped us make and bake the house pieces and make the frosting.  The kids had a lot of fun assembling and decorating it.

 Grant helped by keeping tabs on all the runaway candies.

It's a tough job but...you know

 They were very serious about their decorating

And in the end it looked great.

At a creche display outside the Denver temple

And all dressed up in their Sunday best.  This was taken a few weeks ago, but this is essentially what they wore to church for the Sunday before Christmas...except red stripe ties instead of blue.  I didn't really get them special Christmas outfits.  I'm just happy when they all have clothes on (yes, I'm looking at you, Grant).  Anyway, it's been a very fun holiday season.  We've made the best of it despite missing Scott.  More Christmas excitement to come!