Pre-Christmas

It's that time of year...Christmas is just a few days away! Wow! I have been looking forward to going home for so long that it is hard to believe that tomorrow afternoon we will be boarding a plane to Utah! I haven't seen some of my family for almost ten months now so you can imagine how excited I am to see them. I hear we will be coming home for a white Christmas and we can't wait.

The month of December has been a lot of fun for us, we put the tree up right after Thanksgiving and have enjoyed it ever since although it looks nothing like it did the first day it was up. The kids have sure had fun rearranging all the ornaments and after about one day I got sick of fixing them so it is what it is. Some of the highlights of the month included...shopping, cookies, hot coco, candy canes, Hershey's mint kisses (haven't had any yet but it for sure should be on this list), lights, singing Christmas songs, peppermint ice cream with hot fudge, Christmas movies, more shopping, and of course seeing Santa. One fun thing that was unique this year is a nativity that is put on by our Stake here in Texas. It is a huge event here...I was a bit skeptical at first but it really was awesome. They go all out decorating the church and they set up displays of all different kinds of nativity's from around the world. One lady alone had over 300 sets of her own on display so you can imagine how many there were. They also invite all kinds of choirs to come and sing and have activities for the kids, it was really a lot of fun. I do have to confess that one of the best things about it is that we only have one hour of church for that Sunday...so it meant wrestling the kids for less time...always a bonus! Here is a picture of the kids on the front lawn after our debut at the event...

A picture prior to our first attempt at seeing Santa...we never did quite make it there after a long day of shopping.


This is great I really don't know how people have kids that are actually excited to see Santa. We really tried to talk him up this year and we thought they were excited that is until we actually got to him after waiting in line for an hour. Madison did ok, she wasn't to shy but she was bummed because she thought she would get her dress-ups after seeing Santa and all she got was a color book. (Guess we didn't do so hot explaining how the whole thing worked) Jackson was not a fan of the big guy at all...as you can see. And little Bryton looks like he is just wondering what is going on.