Christmas!

For Christmas Eve we went in to Grandma and Grandpa's house for our traditional nativity play and dinner. Grandma and I had our Ugly Christmas Sweater T-shirts.

Ryan didn't want to be Joseph or the shepherd or a wiseman or anything except the star. So that's what he was. Jacob and Justin stepped in as the wise guys men.

Megan was Mary. She stuffed a baby in her t-shirt so she could have a fat tummy.

Rachel was the donkey Mary rode on, Annie was a shepherd. And Joseph, too, I think. McKenzie and Peyton were the angel choir.

We wish the Seattle Knights could have been here to help us fill in the cast a bit, but we hear they were the animals we needed for the stable, so they did their part from many miles away.

Rachel and Annie performed some songs on the piano and McKenzie and Peyton performed a choral number for us. They got to open one or two presents from Grandma and Grandpa, then we headed home where they opened some new PJs, then got ready for bed. They all fell asleep more easily than I expected, but of course were open early to find that Santa had come.

Annie got a big Lego Friends set she had been hoping for. Rachel got a solar-powered DIY robot and a bag to hold crochet projects and yarn. Among other things...

Megan was excited about the chapstick and gum. And her magic doodle board.

Ryan's favorites were his ball shooters and walkie talkies.

We should have gotten a picture before we had collected all the wrapping paper, but here is some of the minor Christmas chaos (compared to the full blown chaos with the wrapping paper).

Books always call out to this girl. Before playing with toys or getting dressed she just HAD to read at least half (if not all) of one of her new books.

Jacob was taking all the pictures. But he was there. :)

Megan and her gum. :)

The robot Rachel got turned out to have a million tiny pieces and was rather more complicated than advertised. We'll make it happen, though. :)

Cousins and the rest of the in town family came over and we opened a few more presents.

The big hit were these body balls Grandma and Grandpa Knight got for the cousins. Justin stole one and tried to knock everyone over.

No injuies came from them, but a lot of Christmas Story's "I can't get up!" was happening.

Ryan and his walkie talkies have been huge. He loves that you can go anywhere in our neighborhood and still hear over the walkie talkies.

Megan, instead of getting a big body ball that she would barely fit in, got a horsie ball that she can sit on and bounce around on like a horse. It is awesome. She loves it.

December

Other, non-Christmas specific things happened in December, too.

 Ryan won his class spelling bee and got to compete in the school-wide spelling bee. It was pretty nerve-wracking with half the school there, so he misspelled a word he wouldn't have normally missed, but that's ok. We were proud of him for getting up there.

And Megan was pretty excited to get up on the stage with him afterwards. :)

 Annie had a tooth that she lost probably about a year ago. The replacement tooth still hadn't come through, and her bottom teeth didn't have room for more teeth so the orthodontist recommended extracting two teeth. We combined that with the crown she needed done, and she was a champion patient.

 She was pretty nervous about it, so brought her bear. She had conscious sedation, and the dentist said she was amazing and didn't even wiggle or make any noise or anything when she was surely feeling a lot of pressure. Her teeth were incredibly long--Rachel has lost almost all her baby teeth and I have never seen any baby teeth that huge. They had more root than what was above the gums.

 She had a day off of school and sat around watching movies all day, recovering from the mouth trauma, and the wobbliness that came with the sedation medication. And the next day she was back to normal. She was very proud of her gold tooth.

 And the new holes in her smile. Hopefully that saves us from braces in the future. :)

 Jacob and Ryan were matching and handsome for church, so we snapped a picture.

 We got a new camera for our anniversary, and Jacob went out and captured a few nice shots of the sky.

 We had a freeze last week, and in preparation we realized we should get Ryan a jacket since he had nothing warmer than a thin hoodie. He was overjoyed to find this at Ross.

 And it went perfectly with his flip flops. He's a true Arizona kid. :)

Light the World

Last year we had a really great time participating in the Light the World initiative put on by our church. It really helped us to feel the spirit of giving and Christmas, so we were excited when they planned to do the same thing again. And we made plans. A few of our more memorable attempts to Light the World with service this month include:

"Love thy neighbor as thyself"

 We decorated some of our neighbors' driveways with chalk, wishing them a Merry Christmas. We heard back from several of them saying thank you. Even though we tried to do it anonymously. The ones that weren't our immediate neighbors had some of their neighbors notice us and tell them who it was. For our immediate neighbors, it was easy to guess, since our kids couldn't resist decorating our own driveway, too. :)

 We decided to put our Spanish club to good use doing some service and found an opportunity on JustServe.org to make snack bags for the Ronald McDonald house. Every family brought some snacks (some brought a LOT) and we worked to fill the bags.

 Our goal was 20 bags, but we filled 50.

When we went to deliver the bags the kids were all afraid of the creepy Ronald McDonald sitting there. I had to knock on his head to prove he was just a statue.

 I got to go with the youth in our ward to the cannery to do some humanitarian service, bagging beans of the food bank. We set a record, bagging over 13,000 meals that night.

 The next week we again decided to Light the World with our Spanish club by doing some caroling in español. We had learned Joy to the World in Spanish, and the kids already knew Feliz Navidad well enough, so we went to a few of my neighbors and a few of Karolee's neighbors that we knew speak Spanish to sing to them.

 One of my older neighbors was so sweet, he invited us in to show us his nativity and have us sing to him and his wife. It was great.

This year the kids did the sock drive in their classes at school again. They collected double what they did last year for a total of 738 socks (369 pair).

The loved delivering them to AVIVA (for foster kids) and were really proud to say that they and their classes did that.

Those were the most notable things we did as a family to Light the World, but one of my favorite days was when the theme was "it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath." We had little stars printed out for the kids to leave when they did an act of service, no matter how small. Rachel got into that one and did lots of little acts of service around the house for me and her siblings. It was great finding the stars all around.

Christmas preparations

Every year we have our traditions that we do to get ready for Christmas: decorating, visiting Santa, Light the World, treats, etc. Here is some of what we did this year to get in the Christmas spirit:

We made Christmas presents for cousins. On my side of the family the cousins have one cousin they make or buy a present for. This year we actually did make all of them, which is not always the case. Ryan made a cool scarf for Peyton. It was really easy and cute.

 Rachel made Eloise a duct tape purse and hair bow, Annie made Jared a big snake that supposedly can double as a neck pillow on car trips, and Megan helped make a couple smaller snakes for Sammy to play with.

Our real estate agent emails us yearly when Santa is coming to her office nearby. It is not as busy as the mall, and we can take our own pictures for free, so we always go, though it seems to get busier every year. The kids colored while they waited.

 Annie had a letter she had written to Santa requesting specific Lego Friends sets. She did get one of them for Christmas.

 Ryan was in a bad mood that morning because he didn't want to get dressed in the clothes we were asking him to wear for our family pictures we were going to take right after Santa.

 He was fine talking to Santa, but when we wanted a picture he did his passive fighting by trying to appear sad. This is one of his better (happy-ish) pictures.

 Megan was not a fan of Santa. She didn't mind talking to him, but didn't want to sit on his lap. She liked Mrs. Claus well enough, though.

 We've been working with Rachel about her "fake" smile. :)

 All the kids:

 I pulled out most of the Christmas decorations a couple days before Thanksgiving so I could put them up while the kids were in school. We had ordered a new tree on a Black Friday special, so that and the outside lights and such waited until after Thanksgiving.
 After the Christmas decorations had come out, Ryan was really into the Santa idea. He found a Santa hat, gloves, and boots.

 And a beard. :)

 Rachel got the honor of putting the star on our huge tree.

 We thought our last tree that we threw out last year was a 9 foot tree, but looking back at the pictures we realized it was a 7.5 foot tree. That's ok, though. We like our new 9 footer. :)

In our Spanish club that we host at our house weekly we were learning about body parts, so we decided to decorate Gingerbread Men to practice. Before they could eat their cookies they had to tell us what color they had made the various parts. "La cabeza es rojo, las piernas son verdes, el estómago es amarillo..."

 Some had more detail than others, but it was really good for everyone to practice putting colors and body parts together, so we'll call it a success.

 Thankfully, a friend hosted it at her house so we wouldn't have all that gluten floating around our house making Jacob sick. We have a hard enough time at Christmas with all the gluten treats we are given, and my kids know to be careful with where they eat it, and to wash their hands afterwards (even if they do forget and have to be reminded often). So someone else hosted, and another mom baked all the cookies for us. It was really nice of them and a fun time was had by all.

Since December is the season of concerts, I've attended a few concerts of some of my young women. One was early enough that my kids could come along (bedtime is 7:30, which is usually when the concerts have barely started). This was a steel drum concert and was pretty fun, though it did last an hour, so my kids enjoyed it for the first half hour, then were asking when it would be done for the last half hour .

 My mom and I had our traditional candy making day and made 4 or 5 batches of fudge, 3 of caramel, 6 pounds of candied pecans, and some cute peppermint hearts. We decided next year we'll do chocolate covered pretzel rods, too, since they're so easy, and always a big hit.

 Megan and I got to go into Ryan's class on Gingerbread House making day. He had lots of fun and Megan enjoyed decorating her own Christmas tree, too. Just going into his class is a big treat for her. She wishes she were in kindergarten so bad.

 Megan was so proud of her pictures she colored at nursery when they had the Christmas lesson. She kept worrying when she couldn't find them, then showing them off to everyone who came over.

 She is really into coloring lately and obviously loves her bright colors.

The last day of preschool before Christmas break, Megan's class put on a short program singing and signing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Megan and most of the kids did a great job signing. One kid actually sang out loud, and 3 kids sat by their parents and cried and clung to them. Overall, an entertaining show. :)

 The last day of school before break was a half day, so when the kids got home from school I had icing waiting for them to decorate some cookies and an ice cream cone to be a Christmas Tree (I didn't want to worry about Gingerbread houses, so this was as good as it got this year).

 They had a fun time decorating and eating. They got to eat 2 cookies, and gave away the rest.

Annie always goes a little overboard with sweets:

 Look at that cute smile:

 The unpictured Christmas preparations also included fun parties for the kids at school and our ward party, and lots of Christmas movies we tried to fit in along the way. It was a great (and busy) month.