Christmas festivities

  My lack of blogging in no way indicates lack of Christmas activity going on around here.  We have been in the Christmas spirit since the day after Thanksgiving when we got our tree.  We went and saw Santa yesterday (Ava had a very nervous smile), we are in between out of town visitors today, Mike is home for the rest of the year, and I have a moment to update!!  Here goes...

 The kids LOVE unpacking their own personal ornaments.  I have been gifting them one per year and I try to make it along the lines of their interests that year.  So, Ava basically has all Disney ornaments, this year included.  I also realized sometime in the past month, that when they all leave the house and take their ornaments with them, my tree will be bare.  So, I am buying ornaments for myself each year too.

  Ava was the honorary tree topper this year and it is important we document for fear we forget whose turn it is next year!  She was over the moon about this.

  We did our annual trip to Bethlehem and this year the camel was back!

   We wrapped around 800 caramels this year.  I didn't count, but I believe that each batch is about 400 pieces and we did two batches.  The kids are actually really helpful and they actually like doing this with me!

Waiting to be gifted.

   Hannah made cookies for our neighbors and Ava loved helping her out!

   Christmas lights in the park.  The kids get to hang off the car and even drive it and they think this is just the funnest thing!

  We had our gingerbread house decorating party and Mike spent many, many nights rolling out gingerbread dough and cutting shapes to make 23 little houses.  We made two extra!

   And since I didn't think 23 was enough, I asked him if he could make me one big gingerbread house so I could have my own decorating fun!  So we designed this monster at the same time we prepped all week and we are so happy with how it turned out.

   Leftover Halloween candy that I had taken from the kids made an excellent stone path.

Chaotic and magical all the same!

Someone took my advice for the BEST hiding spot EVER!

I turned graham cracker and round cracker boxes into boxes that fit my Christmas presents perfectly.

Mike's work party at SF MoMa.  So fun! 

I'm a sucker for these living walls.

The next night we went to our church's Christmas party.

   Santa telling the kids to behave and be nice to each other.  This was after turning a grumpy child into a happy one.  We also waited less than 5 minutes in line.  We haven't done Santa pictures before (I know...) mostly because of the wait, but this was such a wonderful experience we will definitely do it again!

   Joel's face when he saw the candy canes.  Haha!

   I don't know what Santa even said, but I LOOOOVE this boys laugh.

Only 3 more sleeps!