December 2012 Part One

So I have been totally intimidated on doing December, thus the three months to get it done. T sat down with me to get it organized and said to break it into two parts; before Christmas and after. Here goes on the before!

We started the month with our ward Christmas party. It was a Cowboy Christmas with BBQ and cowboy poetry. B saw Santa and asked for a pocket kite she could take on the cruise with us. It was a relaxing night, although E couldn't be there due to work. That is a regular theme with her now :)

We celebrated my birthday this month as well by going to the Governor's House. It was a nice Victorian Mansion all decked out for the holiday. It was nice to be with everyone and enjoy some of the old holiday splendor.

E had her Christmas choir concert. It sounded good, but she is frustrated by some new, not so talented members. Again it was nice to have those Christmas songs sung.

Since the older two are always so busy, we decided to take B to the neighborhood party. We saw Mrs. Claus who had a real dove that B got to pet. She also sat with this Santa as well. She did turn to me and say that these aren't the real Santa Clauses and I told her that was true. She is very smart about this whole thing, but I think we still have a believer.

We went to a Cookie Walk fundraiser and Bailee saw yet another Santa.  That makes three for this year.  No wonder she doesn't think they the real ones!
 
One new fun thing this year was that Nanna and Grandpa bought both B and her cousin B, Elf's on the Shelf. It was fun to see where this little elf turned up every morning and definitely encouraged B to be really good this year.

M played basketball with the school this year as well and did much better than last year. It is nice to be done with some of those growing pains (not that he is done growing!).
 
T and B decided to have their own Polar Express Party. B read most of it, although Dad helped with the harder words, while they ate cookies and sipped on hot chocolate. That was followed by watching the movie. It was fun to keep up that tradition that she has had since preschool.
Since we were going on a cruise to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary, we decided to celebrate Christmas early. I made our "Christmas Eve" dinner and had my parents come over to join us. We then opened all the fun gifts from my parents and gave them ours. We even had our own little Nativity play that night. It was a nice break from tradition to do it in our home this year.

The next morning we had our "Christmas Morning" where we opened all the gifts, except the one from Santa, who hadn't come yet (seeing as Christmas was really still two days away). We enjoyed all the gifts and were able to go off to church for the Christmas program.

After all that, we cleaned things up and packed because we left on the actual Christmas Eve for our vacation in Florida and the cruise. More to follow...