Christmas Traditions

We had such a great Christmas minus everyone getting the stomach flu at some time and colds.  At the beginning of December I went to our Relief Society meeting and we had a great speaker who talked about how there was a time in his life when he hated Christmas, basically because they were so busy and so many people expected so much out of them.  Once he and his family decided to do only the things they wanted to do to create memories and remember Christ he began to enjoy it again.  He challenged us all to make this change in our lives.  I took it to heart and we didn't do as much this year but we still had a lot of fun and memories were created.  One idea I saw on a blog was wrapping 25 Christmas books and opening one each night until Christmas.  We don't put the presents under our tree until the kids are in bed Christmas Eve so it was fun to have presents under there.  Some of the books were about Santa but a lot were about the true meaning of Christmas, love for others and our Savior.  It helped bring the right spirit into our homes and the kids looked forward to their turn to pick a book.

 

One of the things we always look forward to is the hayride in Layton City park with cookies and hot chocolate afterwards along with a visit from Santa.

 

 Is he getting too old for this?

 We've been lucky enough to get some snow this month which means going sledding.  We've found some pretty good hills.

 The slide was practically frozen so the kids just flew out of it.

 This was our first year doing the elf on the shelf.  The kids looked forward to finding him every morning.  They would leave treats and notes for Mr. Pop-in-kins.  They believed he was like the toys in Toy Story and when humans were around he'd play dead but as soon as we were in bed he came to life.  He was quite a silly little elf hiding upside down in the heater vent, shower and laundry room at times.

 Mikey and Sammy were fighting on the way home from church and instead of putting them in time out I told them they would have to hug each other for 5 minutes.  When I gave out this punishment Sam just started wailing and begged to have a normal punishment.  This was torture.  We lowered the time to one minute and they just had to give a sideways hug.  It worked and it's our new go to punishment for fighting.  Neil saw on a blog how a family has a get along shirt.  It's a huge shirt that the two kids have to put on together for certain amount of time.  He really wants me to make one.

 I just love how Lucy dumped out a bag of lego bricks and sorted them out by color all on her own.

 We did make it down to see the lights at Temple Square.  It was the perfect night.  It wasn't crowded and not too cold.

Are you sure this isn't Ryan's child? 

 We also went to the Grand America the same night and did their scavenger hunt.  The cookies at the end are always worth it.

 The kids always look forward to riding the TRAX.

 We had to make our candy houses.  I bought so much candy.  The boys told Neil how they wanted them made and he put them together with melted sugar and then they got to decorate them.  Conner's was an apartment building, Sam's was a hotel, Mikey's was a train and Lucy's a cottage.  Neil left the backside open so they could make little scenes inside as well.

 I was proud of Lucy. She decorated hers all by herself.

 Sammy trying to decorate his face with the frosting to look like Santa.

 On Christmas Eve we went down to Allison's for a Mexican dinner, some games and some presents.

 Nana and Papa had a rough time getting here but we are so glad to have been able to spend a little bit of Christmas with them.

 Papa was a good sport and played the part of our reindeer well.

 Of course all the kids wanted a picture with the antlers on.

We got the kids to bed about 10:30.  Luckily I had wrapped all the presents earlier in the week so we just had to put them out, make a couple things to eat on Christmas and clean up.  I was in bed by midnight.  The kids were so eager for Christmas morning to come.