December Doings

We started December off with a snow day! It was baby's first snow and she was not so sure about her snowsuit. The only one I had at the time was 12 months and her little arms flapping around was SO cute and I was laughing way too much at the cuteness of it all.

Once we all got bundled up we went over to the park for some sledding. It really is the best place to go for young kids. Paige loved it though I think she would have liked a friend to play with and she would have spent hours going up and down. Baylor went a couple of times and then was done so it didn't last too long but was still fun and the snow was so pretty at the park- on the trees and seeing the lake with all the snow around was gorgeous.

Then in the afternoon, Paige and Baylor worked on building a snowman. It was fun to watch from the kitchen window and then once I got McCall to sleep for her nap, I went out and joined them.

All done!

Then the first Saturday of December, Nate worked all day for the city tree lighting event. It was a pretty cold evening so we just went for maybe 45 minutes to walk around the different booths/crafts that they had and were able to watch the tree lighting with Nate. Then I took the girls and we went to Wendy's for dinner and had a great view of the lit tree and all the crazy traffic of people leaving the event.

On the 7th we had a combined Relief Society/Young Women activity. This has been something on my mind that we should do since the beginning of the year. I really wanted our young women to see how amazing the "older" ladies of the ward are and that we can have fun together. We had a waffle bar and each ingredient had different signs relating to the gospel like: Waffles- don't waffle on your standards; Syrup- when life gets sticky, rely on each other; Strawberries: Jesus loves you berry much and so on. They were fun to come up with. My two counselors did an amazing job setting up and decorating and the Relief Society presidency was in charge of the food. I came up with the activity where everyone had a waffle bingo card and had to go around and have people sign the different squares of their bingo card. This allowed mingling between all the sisters and was not awkward for the young women and it really met the goal that I had to get them all to mingle together. Then each sister filled out 3 questions and I would pick one of the papers and read the name and then everyone would mark off that bingo square if they had that person's name on their bingo card. I had some prizes for those that got bingo and we got to know each other by reading the answers to the questions. 

Then on the 8th we went up to Bellevue as a family to enjoy some Christmas fun. First we stopped to donate to the Giving Machine. It was our first time doing this and it was pretty cool to see. We bought meals for an entire classroom. 

Then we went to Bellevue Botanical Gardens to see their light displays. We went here last when Baylor was a baby and it is always so cool to see. Their light displays have lots of different flowers, garden scenes, lots of butterflies, an underwater scene, and so much more. We all really enjoyed it. Baylor and Paige were excited to point out all the fun things and McCall was content in the front pack staring at all the lights. I got a cute little bear snow suit from a friend and McCall looks SO cute in it.

Then we went to the church by the temple to see all their nativities. The gym was filled with hundreds of nativities and the girls had a little clipboard of things to find. They had a winter wonderland room, a room where you could dress up for the nativity, a movie room where they were showing "The Christ Child", and my favorite part was the Christ walk. You got to walk through a room filled with pictures from the life of Christ in order of his life. It was pretty special to see and I really liked how they used the baptismal font for the empty tomb. 

Then we drove by the lit up temple before heading home.

The girls sent in letters to Santa through the library and we got our letters from the North Pole from Santa himself to each of the girls. The letters are so sweet!

I get to do art with Paige's class at school again this year. I really enjoy doing this since I get to do a little teaching along with something fun but don't have to worry about discipline since the teacher does that. For November I taught the kids about the form of photography where people take pictures of random, everyday things that look like letters of the alphabet. Then they each had to create their own name by drawing everyday objects for each of the letters.

For December I taught about stained glass and focused on the artist Jean Crotti who created the form of art called gemmail where you use hundreds of pieces of glass to create a picture, melt it together, and then shine a light behind it. The class them made their own stained glass window using oil pastels.

Then I did a bonus activity with our young women since this is something that they wanted to do. For quite a few years now, the young women have gone to the Forgotten Children's Fund to wrap presents for those in need. You get to "shop" in this big warehouse for presents for each of the people in a household and then you wrap everything up. It is something the young women really enjoy and this time I was able to also have my family go with me and Paige absolutely loved it. She loved being this secret Santa and doing the shopping for other people. We are actually going to go again this upcoming week with Nona so that she can experience it too. 

The family that the young women had was a household of 12! So they had lots to do and were so efficient and did a great job (this is in comparison to the household our family did which only had 5 people.)

Then our final combined activity for the year was something that our ward has been doing for about 20 years- cookies and caroling. The Bishop along with the Relief Society president and Elder's Quorum president came up with 30 different families to go to. The youth did amazing at all bringing cookies to share so each family probably got around a dozen cookies. Then we divided into 6 groups so that each group had 5 families to go and sing to if the youth wanted and give them a plate of cookies. It is always heart warming to be a part of to see smiles and such appreciation from ward members. I did some extra baking for it and created 2 gluten free plates for some of the people on our list.

One day Baylor decided that it was her Elsa doll's birthday. She created all these signs with pictures of Elsa and then after dinner we all sang Happy Birthday to Elsa and Baylor helped her blow out a candle. I love seeing my girls be creative and use their imaginations!

One day I worked most of the day on scrapbook pages for my mom for Christmas. This is something that started that I would do for my Grandma Walker and then I would make a copy of them for her and my mom and keep the originals for myself.  It is nice to just scrapbook highlights from the year one day and I pretty much got it all done in a day. Baylor did great playing around me and she did end up taking a little rest next to me. It was a little bittersweet this year since I would not be sending any to Grandma this year. I know that she now has a front row seat of my life and gets to witness all the moments of my life instead of getting these scrapbook pages. It is hard to not have her here in person but I know that I will see her again one day and it was be such a sweet reunion.

Then this past Friday was a busy and fun day. Paige had her fun, day before break, day at school. She took presents for her friends and her teacher and came back with all sorts of gifts from her friends. She is an amazing friend and has some really sweet and fun friends at school. Baylor also had a fun Christmas day at preschool. We got to go see her the last hour of her preschool. They sang about 5 songs for us. It is so funny to see Baylor in this type of setting since she is so different at home. When she is at home, she loves to sing and dance and really gets into it. At preschool, she was very timid and shy though she did sing all the songs and knew all the hand motions. She didn't really smile at all the entire time she was singing. Then they decorated cookies and played some Christmas inspired games. It was fun to be with her!

We had our ward Christmas party on Saturday. It was a nice evening. It was very nicely decorated and we had ham, funeral potatoes, Jell-O, and rolls for dinner with an assortment of desserts. We had some great entertainment with our ward choir singing a few songs and then a family did some Christmas songs and we also got to listen to Brother Tomlinson play his saw. They had some sugar cookies to decorate and then of course pictures with Santa. 

So cute! Baylor was in tears right before the picture but got brave enough to give a slight smile for the picture.

I truly love this time of year! There is such magic in it all especially with young kids. We are so excited for Christmas and I love these three little girls SO much!