I decided to get brave and try to start a tradition we had as kids. Every year, my mom would make a bunch of sugar cookies and colored frosting and each of us kids could invite a couple of friends over for a cookie-decorating party. So I baked over 100 sugar cookies one day, made frosting in 6 different colors, and after school the fun (or madness) began!
Connor and Mylie each had their school Christmas programs, which were super cute and they loved doing. I took video at each of those, but no pictures since there was no way I could get a decent one with my camera from where I was sitting. But I did get a shot of Mariah's cute little preschool class doing their short little program at our Christmas party. There are five of us moms that take turns teaching these adorable little girls. They love preschool!
Tony's mom does a tradition with the kids called "Grandma Bags." We get a giant bag of gifts at the beginning of December full of 24 gifts--one for each day through Christmas Eve. There are all kinds of fun, Christmas-themed gifts like decorations, crafts, books, and little toys. Here are Mylie and Brady modeling the antler headbands they got one day.
We took our annual day trip to Salt Lake city to have some fun, eat some good food, and see the lights. This year we did arcade games and other fun stuff at Trafalga and ate at Tucanos. I wouldn't normally think of Tucanos as a kid restaurant, but since Mariah loves salmon, Mylie loves shrimp, and Connor loves steak, they all love eating there! It's kind of hard to see, but that stuff covering half of Mylie's plate is the shells from her shrimp. I don't know how many she ate, but it was a lot!
My handsome, blue-eyed boys at Tucanos.
For Christmas Eve, we had planned to go to Cokeville to my Grandma Teichert's house for her yearly Christmas Eve party. It had been snowing earlier in the day, but when we left, it was clear. We weren't even out of the valley and the wind had picked up and it was snowing again. By Carter, we decided to turn around. The roads were terrible and we didn't want to risk being stuck in Cokeville for the night (or slid off the road somewhere) with all our gifts still at home. So we had our own little Christmas Eve party--just us! It was actually really fun! We started out by opening our Christmas Eve pj's. The girls LOVED their beautiful, all-the-way-to-the-floor, silky nightgowns! Then we acted out the nativity (See cute angel below.) We sang a couple songs and then had a talent show with one talent performed by each person.
And what would a party be without food? I had bought a few things at the grocery store earlier that day just in case we ended up partying by ourselves, and after combining what I had picked up (crackers, meats, and cheeses) with the goodies we had accumulated over the previous few days, we had quite the spread! The little chicken bites wrapped in bacon were probably the hit of the night! We finished the party off by watching "A Christmas Story." It was a fantastic Christmas Eve!
Christmas morning was exciting as always. Rather than bore you (and myself) with picture after picture of kids opening presents and then posing with what they opened, I'll just post two and cover each kid.
Every year, Santa puts a special treat in the toe of the kids' stockings--a pomegranate! The kids love this and look forward to it every year. Here they are devouring them later that morning.
Of course, Christmas wouldn't be complete without some good ol' cousin time. And the kids got plenty of it. We left Christmas afternoon for Cokeville and spent 3 days there, then came home and spent another 3 days with their Micheli cousins. We had a gift exchange with both sides of the family. Cousin gifts are so much fun! My kids are lucky to have so many cousins.
The last Christmas-y thing we did was in Cokeville where we made gingerbread houses, a tradition passed down through my mom's family. The kids really worked hard on them and had fun doing it. Thanks, Mom, for baking the houses and letting us do this. It was tons of fun!
Last Wednesday, Tony and the kids went back to school and Mariah and I spent the day taking down all the Christmas decorations. Mariah decided we should take down the tree first. Before we finished taking down the ornaments, she was in tears. She didn't want Christmas to be over! I sang her the chorus of the Forgotten Carol about this very feeling, and told her it was normal to be sad for Christmas to be over. We would just have to wait until next year and we could do it all again. She asked if we had to wait until Jesus' birthday to come again, and I said yes. She then started to smile, and said, "I know! We should celebrate Santa's birthday too!" Too cute.
1 comment:
Maybe I'm really tired, but knowing how sad Mariah got about Christmas being over made me tear-up a little. I remember being sad all day after Christmas because all the "fun" was over! She is so sweet. Looks like you guys had a great Christmas Eve! I love all the pictures!
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