Christmas Day

 

Santa gifts. Chuggington train tracks for Evan. Princess castle and dolls for Maiya.

 

A scooter for Luke.

 

They can hardly wait. They are so excited to go downstairs and see what Santa brought.

 

Very excited about their new Kindle Fire.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve festivities start with pictures of the kids and then the awesome children's service at our church.

 

 

Hanging up the Santa key, so Santa can get inside.

 

Cookies and milk for Santa.

 

Luke left Santa a gift - a Santa hat that he made from perler beads - and a note that told Santa that his gift was NOT a cookie.

 

Sprinking glitter food for the reindeer.

 

 

Happy kids in matching PJ's.

 

Reading Twas the Night Before Christmas. This was the "laying his finger beside of his nose" part.

 

Heading upstairs to bed.



Cookies

 

Helping cut out the cookies.

 

Busy decorating.

(Maiya fell asleep during decorating time, so there are no pictures of her decorating cookies.)



Evan's 5th Birthday

Evan turned 5 years old on December 20th!

 

 

His face as he saw his new bike. VERY excited!

 

On his brand new Lightening McQueen bike. He said, "This is the best birthday EVER!"

 

He had been asking for the Pop the Pig game forever!

 

A giant space ship (well, it's really just a box).

 

Luke and Evan were pretending that Grandad and Daddy were the "aliens" that were putting together the space ship.

 

Inside the ship. On "hyperdrive."

 

Happy Birthday to one of the sweetest, most kind hearted kids I know!



Busy, busy, December!

We have been keeping busy with our advent calendar activities. Here are some pictures of some of our adventures.

 

We went on a walk and picked up trash that we saw while we were walking.

 

 

We drove around and looked at Christmas lights. We choose our three favorite houses and gave them cookies as our way of saying thanks for making such great decorations!

 

Evan told one of his preschool teachers that he was going to get her a house and a car for Christmas. So, we made her a house from a cardboard box and and gave her a matchbox car. She loved it.

One of our new advent activities this year was handing out Hershey kisses and telling people "Merry Kissmas!" We started out standing outside of Target and many people thought we wanted money. It was in interesting conversation for me to have with the kids about why people are not used to having people just GIVE things away. What a great lesson in learning to give during this holiday season of WANT, WANT, WANT! 

 

We ended up at Chick-fil-A and stood in their drive through line. People there were much more willing to take our candy while they waited to order their food.

 

The picture below is the kids gluing foil to a giant Hershy Kiss. We held these giant Hershey kisses while we were handing out our candy.

 

We have been making a LOT of cookies this December! We made cookies to give to teachers, neighbors, and for the Cookies for Kids Cancer bake sale. It's a good thing Evan knows how to lay cookies into a line of a cookie sheet. This Mama is tired of making cookies!

 

One of the kids favorite activities is going bowling. They give bolwing a thumbs up!

 

Having fun bowling!

 

STRIKE!

 

Scores.