How about a good old fashioned, catch me up, post?! December has been full of so many fun and memorable moments, but there is no way to devote an entire post to each one. Here are a few of the things we’ve been up to in the last few weeks — it has been holiday central in our home!
Last Tuesday was Sophie’s Christmas Program at school. Can you spot her there, on the top row, wearing reindeer antlers? It was a multi-grade program, so her class at on the bleachers across from us until it was their turn.
She was the cutest on stage — grinning from ear to ear, every time she caught us looking.
We don’t have nearly enough photos of the girls with my grandparents, so we grabbed a quick snuggle with my Pop. He was especially proud that day — he had sold one of the girls’ calves the morning before and brought us a college fund contribution. People always laugh when we tell them how we plan to fun the girls’ educations – ha!
This is Sophie’s second grade teacher — Mrs. Gentry — and we love her! We ran over to make sure she didn’t need anything for the Christmas Party later that week and she wanted a quick squeeze and a photo.
Our teacher gifts were some of my favorites ever. We got the idea from another blogger that I love and I bought the 31 zipper pouches when a friend had a launch social earlier in the year. The pencils are from Oriental Trading and we had them personalized with “Best.Teacher.Ever.”
I rarely get to attend functions at school during the day, but I rearranged my schedule in hopes to visit both girls during their Christmas party. I ended up going into work in the afternoon and working pretty late, but it was completely worth it! I don’t have many photos from Ella’s party (because, tweenager), but she was pretty proud of her breakfast plate and I think she was happy to have me there.
Sophie’s party was after lunch, so I had a few hours to work from home before heading back. This is Bailey, her favorite friend in the whole wide world. Her class party had stations with lots of fun things to do and Sophie & Bailey started at the salt dough ornament table.
I helped out at the cookie decorating table, so I was pretty excited when these four showed up. I got lucky that Sophie was in this group, since I know none of these mamas would care that I’m sharing a photo of them! We brought some gluten free Christmas cookies for Sophie, so she got to decorate and eat her masterpieces.
There was also a mom painting faces and she did such a fantastic job! Sophie was the cutest Rudolph I’ve ever seen.
On Friday night, Sophie was an angel in the live nativity at my parents’ new church. Of course, Bailey was an angel (her parents were Mary & Joseph) and there were plenty of live animals, too! We all joked that the camel was going to take out a halo before the night was over. It was so cold outside and we sang approximately 75 Christmas Carols, but it was such a fun night. Ella was at a Christmas party for her small group, so we were running back and forth to get everyone where they needed to be, on time.
On Saturday, we celebrated Christmas with Josh’s extended family, but afterwards we headed to the skating rink for Isabella’s (Josh’s brother’s daughter) birthday party. Watching kids on roller skates is hilarious, but even funnier is trying to stay upright yourself. My legs and butt are still sore today!
Then on Sunday, we headed to the North Pole after church for pictures with Santa. Ella has declared this her last year (because, middle school), but I told her we would renegotiate next year. I remember having my photo taken well into high school (because I was 17 years older than my youngest cousin, at the time), so I’m not confident that this is her last!
We had planned on taking naps and laying by the fire that afternoon, but all three kids wanted to build gingerbread houses. We had a village kit that I picked up from Trader Joe’s, so I put them all together with hot glue (best mom hack ever) and divided them among the kids. They worked hard on their masterpieces, until Vera declared it was lunch time. We spent the rest of the day watching Christmas movies by the fire — we only have a few left on our list to tackle before Christmas Day!
