These Days: Everything Christmas

 Here are a few Christmas activities we did in December.

After being in our house for over a year, we are figuring out how we want to decorate our house. This goes for Christmas too. Last year we skipped outside decorating, with the exception of our front door that my aunt did for us. This year Tim lit up our house with some new LED lights. It looks great, but I still love the good ole C9 lights. They are electricity hogs though so here we are saving the earth and such. 

 

 

 Also last year after Christmas I had some ideas for our mantels, so I bought clearance items after Christmas. This year I have both mantels complete and now I have pictures to reference next year.

 

 

 

 

 

We used all of our "pre-kids" decorations for the dining room.

 

 

 

Aunt Jenny painted ornaments with us

and kicked off our 25 days of Christmas books. 

I tried to make red and green pancakes

 

 

The girls put up a felt Christmas tree

 

 We visited Rhema. This year we got there right before the lights turned on. This was definitely the way to go. No crowds and it was really cool to see millions of lights turn on all at once.

 

 

We went to early church one Sunday and completed all of our Christmas shopping at the mall. We were in and out in an hour and a half. Another "best practice" if you will.

 

Lots of cookie making and decorating this year. I did it in spurts. One Saturday I made up lots of dough and popped it in the freezer. Another Saturday I made lots and lots of icing and put that in the freezer. One weeknight we cut and baked all the cookies and again and you guessed it, put those in the freezer. For each occassion I needed cookies I removed what I needed from the freezer. It was super easy and kept me from spending an entire day in the kitchen. With little helpers this seems best, as they can only "help" for a certain amount of time before they or you lose your mind.

 

 

After 5 cookies each, we determined a better route was for Tim and I to make all the big ones. Then we gave Addy and Lilah a small ball of dough and they could make some baby cookies.

 

Ugly Christmas Day at work. I also volunteered for the month of December for our once a month snack day. Since it was right before our week long Christmas break, I decided to spice it up and add a Christmas cookie decorating contest. Then I got asked to be on the "fun committee". Things are going well at the new job I would say.

 

 

And last but not least, Addy's wrapping job for her daddy's presents. She said she could not find tissues, so she used baby wipes. After she showed me her genious idea, she said "don't worry mom, they will dry". Side note: Tim noted the bags were wet but wipes were dry on Christmas morning. Haha.

 

Christmas Jammies