Christmas 2013 Festivities

Yeah...I am WAY behind with the blog.  This post has been written for several months now but I was looking for a particular photo and have given up.  I must be dreaming that it ever existed...

As always, we had a very busy Christmas season this year.

We started by letting the kids help with the decorating the tree which is always fun for everyone!  Brayden understands how to put the ornaments on the tree (i.e. not all in one spot), but of course, Lilly has no idea.  Brayden was really good about helping Lilly get her ornaments on the tree without making her mad.

The following weekend was Matt's office party.  We always go to his office party because we don't ever have a chance otherwise to dress up and go out.  In the past, the parties have been at fancy places in downtown or fancy country clubs but this year it was at the office.  I have to say, the ladies who did the decorating did an AMAZING job!  We had a great time and look forward to next year's party!

One of Brayden's friends, Zach, his little sister Meredith, and mom came over and decorated gingerbread houses with us.  Meredith is a few months younger than Lilly so I made small gingerbread houses out of graham crackers for the girls.  The boys made full size houses out of the kids.  Everyone had a great time and ate way too much candy!!  Unfortunately, I was too busy helping the kids to take many pictures during the decorating, but the finished products turned out quite good!

Brayden was very detail oriented

Lilly was very focus on the task at hand.  She did eat about as much candy as she put on the gingerbread house!

Lilly's Gingerbread house

Another view of Lilly's

Then we had our traditional small group cookie decorating party for the kids on the 15th and then that night we all go sitters for the kids and the adults got together for a fun night. 

The weekend before Christmas, one of the other moms from daycare and I threw a party for 8 or 9 of the boys in their class.  This group of boys has been together for 4 years now and have gotten to be pretty good friends.  The theme of the party was "The Polar Express".  We planned on letting the boys watch the Polar Express movie, do a craft, have hot chocolate, do a "Who am I?" game, and do a gift exchange.  Of course, it was 70+ degrees on December 22, so all the boys wanted to do was play outside!!   We were able to get them inside long enough for an ornament craft, hot chocolate, and the gift exchange.  For the gift exchange, we did a Frosty the Snowman Pass the Gift Left/Right story.  Amazingly, our 5ish year old boys, get very confused with this and we ended up cutting the story very short!  Otherwise, the boys were running around outside having a blast!

 The same friend that took our family photos back in September came over one night and took pictures of the kids in the Christmas PJs in front of the tree.  Despite very uncooperative kids, I think the pictures came out really well!

When they were still cooperating :)

Note sure what Lilly was doing, but it looks like she is trying to dance!

I love this one of Brayden :)