Christmas prep

The much sought/fought after privilege of topping the tree with the star went to Annie this year.

The kids hosted their 3rd annual Sock Drive for a Light the World service project this December. They collected socks at school throughout the week and altogether we collected 392 socks, or 196 pair.

We all spent an evening making Christmas cards for missionaries from our ward for another Light the World activity.

My mom came over for our annual candy making day. We were going to do a double batch of fudge, but then accidentally added two 12 oz cans of evaporated milk instead of two 5 oz cans, so we ended up doing a quadruple batch. We had to pull out the huge pot to keep it from bubbling over and as we took turns we felt like witches stirring our brew.

The fudge turned out just fine, though, in the end.

For our anniversary I made Jacob some gluten-free Circus animals, since that was one thing he said he misses most since going gluten-free.

As long as I was melting almond bark to dip the pretzels in I figured I'd make him a few more. :)

We had quite the haul:

Candied pecans, lots of fudge, caramels, and dipped pretzels.

One new thing we tried this year was pouring some of the caramels into silicone molds that I happened to have since the worst part of making caramels is usually cutting and wrapping for hours. It made a huge difference and made things way easier this year. We'll get some good molds for next year for sure.

For mutual one night we went out caroling to some families in the ward. One of the families had awesome lights:

Our ward building hosts a nativity/creche open house every Christmas. The kids sang a song, and afterwards we went around looking at the nativities, and Megan dressed up as Mary in the kids' nativity area.

I showed the kids the Light the World--Light your Family video last Monday and it inspired Annie. She went and made siblings' beds, cleaned up the front room, and decided to make pancakes for us for dinner so I wouldn't have to cook. She was amazing!

The other kids pitched in, too, with setting the table and such.

Jacob's work has a yearly Christmas party and always raffles off some prizes. 13 years going and he's never one anything. Until this year. He won a Roomba. It's the kids' new fun toy.

It was amazing how eager they were to clean their rooms when I told them they could use the Roomba in their room when it was totally clean. Hope that excitement keeps up. :)

The band played before school last Wednesday to wish the school a Merry Christmas.

Megan was excited to get to hang out at school for a while and play on the playground a bit. I don't take the kids this year nearly as much as I did last year because there's no before school clubs and the bus is so much more convenient. But Megan does miss that playground. Maybe I'll be more motivated to take her to play before school more often when it's not as chilly in the mornings.

We have now turned off all alarms and are looking forward to more than a full week to do whatever we want and mostly hang out at home or do fun family outings. Here comes Christmas! The kids are so ready for it.