Christmas Time Fun

Ah! Christmas time! Some years all the parties and get togethers are all clumped together. Not this year! It was party time every couple of days!

This is a picture of my book club - the BBB! We've been a book club for more than 8 years now and I sure love these ladies! We get together once a month, eat yummy food, talk about everything (and sometimes even the book;), and stay up way too late. :)

Every Saturday in December there was a Christmas party. The first Saturday I wasn't feeling at all well so Spencer took the kids. The party was one that Kristen and Tracie's school was putting on for the families of the students. Here's a picture of Eliza on Santa's lap that Julie snapped for us. The kids had a ton of fun at this party - making crafts and playing games.

Each of them also got a gift. Eliza's was a tower thing. Lucy thought it made a funny hand. :)

A couple of years ago we started making a gingerbread house together as a family.

I think this was my favorite one we've done - probably because it was already put together. All we had to do was decorate it!

The second Saturday was our ward's family Christmas party. Sammy loved this cupcake someone brought.

All the kids got tinsel halos to wear and at the end of the short, fun program, they all got jingle sticks. Eliza loved hers!

And we all danced to the music while shaking them.

This Santa picture just cracks me up! Sammy was terrified of him. Eliza was too curious to pay attention to the camera. And Lucy was willing to smile for a picture as long as she didn't have to sit on his lap! This picture just makes me smile. :)

This is a random story.  One Sunday afternoon, a woman in our ward posted on Facebook about this dinosaur in our park. So I threw the kids in the car and drove over there. We were too late - the police had moved him already. But they had moved him to another neighbor's garage so we asked to see him. The kids loved seeing this big raptor in some random garage! Turns out it had been stolen from outside a store on the other side of the valley and left in our neighborhood park.

I'm doing Joy School with Sammy this year.  So of course we had to do a Christmas program. He was a wise man.

We had the older siblings (mostly kindergartners) help out with the program and Lucy got to be a shepard.

We did a program for the parents and then a few days later did it at a local nursing home. The residents there loved them! After they performed, we also took them around to residents who couldn't get out of their rooms and sang to them. It was a really neat experience.

On our anniversary every year Spencer and I go out to dinner and then down to Temple Square. The moon looked so cool behind the temple.

And we always take our picture in front of it. Unfortunately, they were all blurry. :(

We also found time to make some cut - out cookies, though we never did frost them!

Spider man helped too!

My mom loves to make clothes for the kiddos. This year she made all three of them Christmas outfits - dresses for the girls and a tie and vest for Sammy.

They looked stylin'!