Delightful December

 

December is always a fun month! We love to wait in anticipation for Christmas and the rejoicing in the birth of our Savior. We  love to do many advent books and traditions. We also have many traditions we like to do each Christmas season. So December is always a fun month even though it is in the dead of winter.

 

Aubrey is so strong! She can just climb up that rope so fast!!

 

 A beautiful sunrise sky above the trees when I was out running for my work out one morning.

 

 

We went to watch the new Spiderman movie called Spiderman No Way Home at the theater. It was definitely a fun movie to watch in the theater. We are a little bit of marvel fans!

Aren't these the cutest skis?! The girls have outgrown them and we need to sell them, but they are so cute!

It was time for our pretty ballerina sticker to go. She was getting worn out and torn so we took a last picture and then let it go.

Three cute little kitties eating by one another!

I had the pleasure of helping to run the Christmas party this year for the youth. We did it after church on a Sunday early in December and Kelsey helped me plan it. It turned out really fun! We had pizza for lunch and then the kids did a elephant gift exchange.  I think most of the kids were happy with what they got. Except Olivia who didn't remember what gifts we brought and picked one that we had brought that she did not like..lol! After that, I had wrapped up candy in saran wrap and the kids had to pass the ball and try to unwrap a piece of candy before the person next to them rolled doubles....oh and they had to wear oven mitts to unwrap them with.  This was pretty fun and took some time and everyone got some candy! And last we played a fun game Nancy had up her sleeve to finish off the time. The pictures here are shown in reverse order.

One of our traditions is hiding the shepherd. The day the shepherd was hiding in the China cabinet.

The house always looks so pretty decorated for for Christmas. We like to work out with the lights on.

Another tradition each year is to do gingerbread houses. The girls always love to decorate and spend some time working on them.

I love this silly cat! He loves to get into little spaces.

I really loved our study of Matthew this year in BSF. This is my table a few times a week as I work on my BSF and drink my coffee.

 

The cute little baby kitty also loves sleeping under the tree. I love how the cats love to sleep under the the Christmas trees.

Another thing we love to do at Christmas time is to make sugar cookies. The girls always do such a great job decorating them. They don't love eating them as much as making them though so we always have more than we can eat. These are again in reverse order.

We had a great ugly Christmas sweater and white elephant gift exchange at our church. It was a really fun party! And the ugly Christmas sweaters were really something! And this time we came home with some ok gifts.

This was one of the funniest gifts!The boys were fighting over it.

Raelyn and Claire had a Christmas dance show at Irene's. I am glad that got to do this and show their dances. I was disappointed with the school location. It was worst place they have had ever done them. It made me frustrated when I know there are nice schools and places and I pay taxes for these schools and this is where they did their show. The other thing that stunk was they had to wear masks. Ugh! I was just so bummed with the dumbness of dancing on stage in a mask. Why they could not remove them for the dance is beyond me. It was dumb! Regardless the girls did great and we enjoyed watching them. This was Claire's first time dancing on pointe. Afterwards many were complimenting her on her pretty feet. Apparently she has a beautiful arch and her feet look very pretty in pointe shoes.

I think these are all out of order, but here is pictures of their dances.

Raelyn doing her ballet dance. Raelyn did such a great job! Her hands and arms looked so nice and she pointed her toes so well! And she knew the dance the best of all the kids.

 

 

 

Here is Raelyn's jazz dance. Again she knew her dance really well and did a great job!

Claire also had two dances and did a great job. This first one is her ballet dance. She was sometimes hard to see because the stage was small and there were a lot of girls on the stage.

And here is her pointe dance. Sorry for the bad video taping. This was the first dance we watched I had was in the wrong spot to video tape I found out quickly. Look for her beautiful feet! She was in the back and is hard to see unfortunately.

After dance pictures! Love these little dancers!

Cute little Aubrey with two of her favorite cookies.

Christmas pictures in front of the tree on a random Sunday I believe.

The girls were doing some painting and curious little Samson got in the paint!

The girls had fun painting polar bears at Christmas time. They all did such a good job!

And we made lots of candy like we love to do!

Christmas is always so magical and fun! I love the lights and all the traditions we do. This was Christmas Adam. We always get a new puzzle on Christmas Adam and this year the girls got a marvel puzzle.

Christmas Eve we had our traditional lasagna and caesar salad.

Christmas Eve pics in front of the Christmas tree.

One of my favorite things about Christmas Eve is the candlelight service. The beautiful candle light lighting the faces of the family I love and the church family I love as well. And always a good reminder of why Jesus came to Earth to save each one of us who believe in his name.

When we got home we opened our Christmas Jammies. I think these are one of my favorites ever. The girls really liked them too and they are comfy!

And then the magic happened. How blessed we are to have so much under the tree.

For some reason I woke early on Christmas and the girls slept in. I enjoyed my coffee with whipped egg nog on top...so yummy and enjoyable in front of the Christmas tree.

Stella opening her stocking...she was so happy!

Time for stockings! Christmas morning always makes me happy. I love giving gifts and making people happy with them. It really is one of the best days. And I love the amazing gift that Jesus gave us.

The girls got some fun gifts for Christmas this year. A weighted blanket, ballet slippers, a hooded blanket, some hatchimals and squishies. And lots of other fun stuff. The younger 2 got new mini i-pads and everyone got some Chosen gear. I got a new shade tent for camping and some tubes for Banks and church camp.

The table is all ready for dinner! On Christmas we often have prime rib, but this year it was too expensive so we just did our fabulous tri-tip roast and some yummy sides.

The next day after Christmas we got snow! It is always fun and exciting to get snow once or twice a winter. This snow stuck around for a whole week which is so long for us! Usually it is gone in just a day or two.  It was definitely a pleasant Christmas surprise!

Olivia got to use her brand new ski coat and ski pants the day after Christmas.

We decided to hook up the sleds behind the pickup this year and pull them behind the truck. The girls had a lot of fun and I rode in the back of the truck and took pictures. 

Claire and Aubrey riding...

Aubrey and Raelyn...

Oliver likes wearing scarves!

And it kept snowing the next day!  But I woke up that Monday morning with a headache, body aches, and a sore throat. And it felt different enough that I dreamed all that morning that I had the 'rona (as I like to call it). So after Hans ran a few errands he came home and I took a test he had on hand (from work) and it was positive.  Uh-oh. Turns out from texting and seeing that some other friends from our  church had similar symptoms we figured out that our Christmas eve service had been a spreader.  I started up my 'rona protocol right away. This included lots of vitamins, ivermectin, and many other things. It worked great and the worst of it was over in less that 24 hours. I am pretty sure it was the omicron variant which also helped the symptoms to be lighter I believe. That night and into the next morning Claire and Olivia developed symptoms and they felt sick the whole day of Tuesday.  At least the kids got to enjoy the snow on Monday before they felt sick.

I felt good enough to go out and get a few pics of the girls playing in the snow on Monday, before they starting to feel bad.

The next day, Tuesday, Olivia and Claire weren't feeling well but the younger 2 felt fine. So I took pics of them playing outside while I was inside. I felt much better, but had a metallic taste in my mouth and I started coughing.

I love that Rae watches TV from the stairs sometimes. Especially sometimes in the early morning.

Wednesday, Claire was back to feeling better and the younger 2 still didn't have any symptoms. I was feeling quite a bit better. Here they are playing in the snow!

And we had some extra time to do puzzles!

And we got a s'more maker from my mom! Yum! S'mores any time!

Thursday and Friday (New Year's eve) Hans finally came down with the 'rona. He had chills, body aches, and headache for less than 48 hours and then felt fine. He had no cough from it at all. The younger 2 had very minor symptoms. Raelyn had a slight headache, but it didn't stop her from playing and Aubrey had a slightly worse headache than Raelyn and was down a bit more, but not much. This is Thursday and we were back out for my time to play in the snow.

I got this snow dye. The girls thought it looked like it was bleeding to death and not a scarf though. So we may not do that again for a snow man! But it was fun to draw in the snow with.

New Year's Eve was kind of a bummer. We were planning to have friends over and celebrate with them. But since we were all sick we had a low key New Year's Eve at home with nothing significant happening. I can't even remember what movie(s) we watched.

So that was it, the end of 2021. 2021 was a hard year in so many ways and in one way I was happy to see it go, but on the other the apprehension of what 2022 would bring was definitely there and as always even though the year was kind of crappy in many ways it is always hard to move into a new year as it just means we are getting older and our kids are getting older and so it is always just emotional for me. The passing of time is just really hard sometimes when you have kids.