December was, as always, a whirlwind of activity, tradition, shopping and relishing in the spirit of the wonderful season!
The kids loved helping putting out the village and decorating the tree. Casualties were less than expected. Audrey broke a piece of one ornament and Kennedy tore the window off one of the village houses- not too bad.
The Festival of Trees is a tradition we've loved each year. This year we went on a Friday night which we knew would be rough and we'll try to avoid in the future. Pretty crazy! I parked in what I can only assume was a compact car spot and our car is anything but. If we could have crawled out of the trunk, it would have been easier.
The Rapunzel tree was a hit.
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| Kennedy to this day will point to her cheek and say "hohoho." |
We did lots of the kids games. Face stamps, fishing, nail painting, necklaces and bubbles.
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| This is our niece Chloe. |
Audrey and Kennedy go to Young Women's activities with me sometimes. Audrey thinks she's one of them I think. Ice skating was a must! Audrey was fearless. She didn't want to stop. She was okay with falling down. It was great to watch her!
Kennedy, on the other hand, was not interested. She was okay staying outside the rink eating Swedish Fish.
This year we tried "Elf on the Shelf." I always wondered if it would be a little creepy for the kids to imagine him watching us all the time. We named our elf Buddy. The girls had a lot of fun looking for him each morning.
Audrey had her preschool program. There were probably about 2 million people there (give or take a few) so even though we were 20 minutes early we were on the back row. Audrey did a great job. It's always entertaining to see how the kids react to the pressure. Some kids refused to participate and some let their enthusiasm get the better of them at times.
This is Audrey's 'special friend' Breea. Miss Heather gave all the kids a book for Christmas.
Audrey also had a Christmas recital for dance. They were cheerleaders. I had never curled her hair before so I was actually interested to see what I could do with it. For her dress rehearsal I curled the top pieces with a curling iron which actually seemed to straighten it.
For the recital we tried curlers. It would have been a little better if we could have left them in all day. We had errands to run so it went a little flat in places.
This is where they're yelling "GO SANTA GO!" (It looks like Audrey is a little bit ahead, moving on to the next step or something.) She did well. It's a lot of fun to watch her on "the big stage" as she calls it.
Christmas is always fun, but it's the stuff that comes with it that make it a season worth remembering.
