My kids are crazy and I have videos to prove it.

Erica drove us to see the Festival of Lights. She still needs to sit on someone's lap to see over the steering wheel but other than that she's good.

We went after it snowed last and it was so pretty and cold.

 I'll miss this--them being all little and easily entertained by Christmas lights and music.

I'll drag them along even if they don't want to. I don't love it but to not go means they are big and they will never be big. 

I found this cute little mug at DI when I was looking for white elephant gifts. I bought it for me because I liked it.

I looked it up and these sell for $6 on ebay and is 25-60 years old. Not bad for 75 cents. It sits in my kitchen windowsill so I can look at it while I do dishes. I may use it for hot chocolate. 

 This is a shed in my neighborhood on fire. I still haven't got any details about how it started or what was in there but no one got hurt. 3 large fire trucks came and shut down the street so that was cool.

I got some Christmas lights from my mom that were my aunt Ilona's. Surprise! They play music. 

It sounds like a doorbell playing Christmas music and James loves it so much he climbs onto the counter and turns them on and then I turn them off and he turns them back on. It's a fun game we play. I'm losing.

Speaking of James getting into stuff-- this is the scene I found after getting out of the shower one day. I heard the distinct sound of ripping wrapping paper and caught this little monster in the act.

Here's what he had to say for himself.

Last week Sarah got to sing at some school district meeting with her school choir. I took her along with Max Stephenson. 

I have a feeling this is the first of many choir performances I'll be taking her to.

And then a few days later family home evening we went to watch Sarah perform in her choir at school.

Then afterwards we played a little game of charades--Christmas animal edition. 

Tuesday we saw the new Spiderman movie. We all loved the movie and enjoyed the recliners. I'd like to see it again without a wiggly, sticky 2-year-old on my lap but he did great considering it was his first movie and it was 2 hours long.

Yesterday Sarah performed as Scrooge in her class play of "A Christmas Carol." She had originally gotten a different part but the boy who was to play Scrooge kept missing school so she was subbing for him a lot and then they just gave her the part instead.

She sure likes being in front of people. She gets nervous and giggly and if I make eye contact with her it makes her grin and break character and that's funny to me.

Erica was kind enough to model the stocking cap I made for her costume. Sarah was at school so I fitted it between the size of her head and mine. "Big on you and tight on me. That should work."

These are a couple of other Christmas sewing projects. One is a table runner that I lined with hot pad material so we can put hot pans right on it. (Genius, huh?)

Second is this ribbon countdown. My mom has a Santa one that I loved as a kid so I thought my kids needed one.

I glued this ornament on the top and love how it turned out. It wasn't as much of a hit with my kids as our other advent calendars but I think it's because they don't love mini candy canes like I do.

 Erica built this fort and wanted her picture taken with Teddy or Sally or whatever her bear is named this week.

Today was their Christmas program at school. I was even one of the good audience members that stayed for the entire thing instead of ducking out after my kids were done even though I usually do duck out and James was grumpier than a pregnant lady on the 4th of July but the principal asked us not to. 

Nothing brings me more Christmas joy than Henry's face in this song.

And cute Sarah singing again.

Tomorrow at noon Christmas break officially begins! I have to brave the stores one more time to get what seems like very random things and wrap a closet full of presents and make some amazing desserts. 5 days and counting. Let's do this!

It finally looks a lot like Christmas around here

On Nov. 30 we went to Justin's work party at Trolley Square. This is the view from the parking

garage which I thought was super pretty. 

One afternoon the kids went down the street to sled on a hill and James felt left out so I suited him up so he could play in the snow. For him that means walk around and find spots to taste.

And you better believe he did it again.

Henry wrote this sweet letter to his teacher. He never gave it to her and I think he threw it away so I'm glad I got a picture of it. He can be so sweet.

Thursday was his turn to do his country report. He chose Brazil because he's heard of the Amazon river and that they are good at soccer. So his report was about the Amazon river and how good they are at soccer. Or "futbol, which means football" as he explained in his report.

He wanted to do a powerpoint presentation with lots of pictures and Brazilian music playing so that's exactly what we did. He was the only student to do a powerpoint.

While I helped with his report, James and Erica spent the hour at my mom's. James found this Christmas decoration. It has 2 little ice skaters that move around by a magnet on the mirror while a song loudly plays. He's pretty much obsessed with it and I had to carry him out kicking and screaming.

Hooray we finally got our tree! Justin took Friday off from work and we took the kids to Ephraim to get a tree permit at 7:45 in the morning. (4th graders get a free permit with their EKIP pass) Then we drove Spring City canyon, suited up in our snow gear and started looking around.

Well the kids mostly sled while Justin and I looked around.

It was so pretty up this wooded narrow canyon. It was a winter wonderland.

So many trees to choose from!

Then Justin and I came upon the same tree from opposite directions. It was a magical moment!

James sat in the snow and ate snow off his gloves and whined while Justin cut it down and did the same thing again while he strapped it to the roof of the car.

We were done by 10:15 am! We ate some fudge and hot chocolate in the car before we headed back home. The big kids ate lunch and I took them to school. Not bad for a morning's work.

I put the lights on the tree while the kids were at school and James was asleep. I went to the store then we decorated it until dinner. Not sure which one of my kids took this picture.

I left my phone at home while I  was out and I have a dozen of these shots.

Now that some of my kids are taller, their ornament placement is getting more spread out so I hardly put any ornaments on at all.

 Using the stool helps.

James purposely broke this candy cane so he could eat it.

This year has been fun with James because everything is new to him since he doesn't remember and he gets super excited.

 Oh the teen angst is starting early with this one. She read her book on the stairs because she was pouting about something.

James got this sled ornament at the store the day before and is driving it like a car on the floor. 

 Speaking of which, I don't even know where this ornament is or if it ever made it on the tree. He may have put it with his toy cars.

Aren't they so cute?!

 Here's a good sequence of events:

About 20 seconds after this she herself fell off the stool and took down the wooden candles off the shelf with her. She landed hard on her bum and cried out, "I'm sorry, Mama!" Broke my heart that she was concerned about messing up the decorations when she hurt herself so bad. I had to hold her for a few minutes and reassure her and once we put everything back she was okay.

This is as good as a treasure chest for me. Look at all those homemade and schoolmade ornaments.

 Ta-da! It's a little wonky shaped and wonky leaning and I love it.

Erica has to have the wisemen of my new nativity huddled together just so.

Here she is explaining why.

It looks like they are coming up with a game plan before they head to the stable.

These are my new candlesticks. I've wanted some nice ones for a long time but they are hard to find for the taper style candles. I found these at Joann's but since I am cheap, I bought them one at a time  over the course of a month as I got the best deal with coupons. But then they were out of stock for awhile and they only ordered 2. Let's just say it took 2 phone calls and 3 trips to the store in one day to finally complete the set. Totally worth it.

Saturday night was our ward Christmas party. They had a photo booth and I handed my phone to Sarah and I got a few gems in return.

BF Myer and Henry

Sarah and Max Stephenson in his ugly Christmas sweater that gave me the creeps.

That's all for now. I'm going to spend my week making cookies and fudge and finding more spots to hide presents.