Fun in December

We are already halfway through February and I realized that I should get my December and January posts done before I finished up another month (more like I needed to get it done before I forgot what actually happened :D)!

 The last several years Elf on the Shelf has become quite popular and this year some of the kids begged the owner Lynn to get one, she decided she was in a nice mood and got one for us while she was on one of her runs to Costco (but of course it wasn't the original, it had a cloth face which caused some major meltdowns in my kids, but that's a different story). I got to participate in some of the helping of the moving of our elf, one night he decided to hang out in the cereal. The kids would get so excited to find out where it was in the morning or to show me where it was when I got to work, they would even come down to say good-night to it if they were taking a nap. I don't think it will be something that I want to do in my future home but it was still fun to watch the kids react to it at work. 

We tried an art project where you put white glue and then cover it with salt. Once it dries you put drops of paint and watch it spread across. The original experiment said to use smaller like table salt but I wanted to see what it would be like using different sized salt. The kids loved doing it and wanted to do several, I just loved this one because it came looking out like spongebob so of course I had to take a picture to send Derek. 

I've been hearing for several years about the Festival of Trees and thought it would be interesting to go to. Kyle, Mom, Derek, and I went one Friday evening afterwork (that night traffic was TERRIBLE! when I was leaving work I looked at my phone to see how long it said it was going to take to get home and it normally takes 15 minutes but this time it was an hour and 34 minutes!). It was pretty neat, I couldn't believe how many different trees, wreaths, houses, and gingerbread houses there were! I enjoyed mostly just looking at everything and didn't take very many pictures...

 I of course HAD to take a picture of this one though, it's the house from Anne of Avonlea/Anne of Green Gables. I Love Love Love that story and I was super impressed with how the house looks!

 This one was based off the M.C. Escher's drawing House of Stairs. 

I randomly heard about a firework show that was supposed to be happening out in a small town past Saratoga Springs, if I haven't mentioned before I absolutely love fireworks and will pretty much jump at any opportunity to go watch fireworks.  

When we went to the Festival of Trees they were selling scones, they sounded really good, but the line and price was ridiculous. Derek, Kayla and I were walking separately from Mom and Kyle and when we came up Derek asked Mom when she was going to make some and she said they were just having a conversation about her making them the next day. Mom made the dough and we cooked up some delicious scones. 

I made up a couple of different honey butters to go with the scones. 

Draper had a tree this year that they lit up and titled the Tree of Life. It was quite amazing how much it actually looked like the tree that has been put in paintings/drawings to represent the Tree of Life from Lehi's Dream. It was really beautiful. When we went though there were lots of people walking/running around and it was quite loud so it was hard to appreciate the spiritual representation.  

Every Christmas season the First Presidency does a Christmas devotional, Ben and Sonia invited us over for dinner and to watch it with them (awesome side note on that, the devotional this year was December 7 and I went on a bike ride that afternoon before going over to Ben and Sonia's). I had been brushing Sarah's hair when Isabel took the brush to brush Uncle Kyle's hair. It was cute!

Finally, several months after deciding to start this project I finished my birthday wall. I had seen a couple of different ideas and kind of combined them together to be something that I wanted. I think they turned out super cute and add some color pop to the wall. 

Libbey and Erick went on a trip to Florida in December, while they were gone Mom and I watched Alexia and Sophie for a couple of days. They got to come work with me for part of the time. They did so well, immediately making new friends and having fun the whole time. The second day when I took Sophie to her class they were playing outside, she went straight out to play and didn't even look back at me once she started to play. 

 They got a surprise from Mommy of matching pajamas that they were so excited about! 

My boss was talking about this idea that she had heard of someone doing and I loved the idea and recreated it. I gave each kid a couple of green triangles that they got to decorate how they wanted and then we put them together to create one giant tree. I love the variety of color and designs. 

We heard from Derek that one of the nights that the girls were at our house that it was cheaper to go see the Lights at the Zoo, I'd never been to the Zoo before and thought it sounded like something fun and different to do. So Kayla and I bundled up the girls and we headed to the Zoo. Somehow we got lucky and got a parking spot only on the second row (the side of the road was lined with cars leading up to the Zoo) and as we were getting out of the car Kayla found an unopened package of glow sticks. The girls loved them!

 Lexie spent half the time matching the colors of the lights to her glow stick. 

 They became fast friends with Kayla, holding her hand most of the time or wanting to be carried by her. The best was when we got back in the car and were on our way home. Kayla said alright everyone that knows my name raise your hand, I raised my hand but Lexie didn't (Sophie had already fallen asleep). We told her Kayla's name and then she asked if we could ask the question again, she was ready this time. 

As I've mentioned before Sarah is an awesome door decorator! She put this one together and then Joseph (Jenn's husband) drew the face. They both have such talent!

Sarah had told me about Dickens Festival that she had heard about, it sounded just like something that Mom would love. So we went, there was so much to see and if you came with lots and lots of money it could quite easily be spent. 

 Everything was decorated to look like Old English, the sellers even were required to be dressed up to. There was even a choir of orphan children singing (at one point I saw an orphan trying to escape and a police officer was chasing after him). 

Kayla and I got to go shopping for her Christmas tree, I've missed doing that as we've used a fake tree for several years. It made me feel some pride though as all of the trees came from Oregon. 

Another experiement...we made our own window clings! All it took was gelatin, food coloring, water, and we added glitter. We mixed it up the first day and then the next we cut it out and put it on the windows. The kids cut them out and then they got to go pick which window they wanted to put it on, it was fun going through the whole building and seeing them everywhere. 

Libbey invited Mom, Sonia and I up to having a baking night. We brought the supplies up and made different kinds of cookies, at the end we split them up and came home with lots of goodies. 

Just as high up with fireworks for me comes looking at Christmas light displays. One night Kayla and I went down to Spanish Fork to their Festival of Lights, it wasn't very expensive and had so much to look at (so much better than Thanksgiving Point in my opinion). 

After the Festival of Lights we also went to this park that had trees that were lit up on the pond and we also just made the rounds looking at all of the different places that we could find that were lit up. 

 Sometimes I go through my phone and find silly pictures left as a present from my kids :)

Nathan and Sallee stayed with us a few days before Christmas, I didn't get to see them a lot because I was working most of the time but my favorite part was that almost every night I got to rock little Amelia to sleep. I love when babies are cuddly in your neck. 

This other night it was rather late and miss little should have been very tired and asleep, but instead she was wide awake and very smiley/talkative to Grandma and me :D

I had seen a fun idea of decorating ice cream cones as christmas trees with frosting and sprinkles/other candy. We didn't have enough green frosting but the kids still had fun doing it. 

I love this picture of Noah! Sonia invited us to go watch Penguins of Madagascar with her and Sarah during Christmas break. I got lucky and Noah was sitting beside me, he was so cute. During the movie he would randomly say "Waddle Waddle" (what they call Penguins) and then just start giggling. 

Christmas day pile on Uncle Kyle! I spent Christmas day sick, sick, sick. But I was still able to enjoy most of the festivities from chair. 

One of the only days that we had a little bit of snow the kids asked if we could go outside and play in the snow for a little bit, we bundled them up and went outside. Miss Lucy said get Miss Beth and all of the kids turned on me and this is what happened. 

New Years Eve is Mom's birthday, we ended 2014 with dinner, games and talking at Ben and Sonia's. It was fun but I was more than ready for bed, we stayed for counting down and cheering at midnight and then I think I was in bed by 20 minutes after midnight.