On December 3rd we went to our ward Christmas breakfast. There was hash brown breakfast casserole, bacon and sweet breads, then the kids got to decorate sugar cookies. It was fun except I had mistakenly called the event "ward Santa breakfast" for weeks, so the kids were really disappointed when the expected visitor didn't come!
We did two crafts, a Christmas train caboose at Lowes, then these snowman napkin holders at Home Depot.
Shortly after that, we had to get over to the Festival of Trees where Faith did an amazing ballroom dance performance. Afterward we enjoyed some of the activities and crafts.
The kids were starving by this point, so we drove over to Chick-fil-A for some lunch and the kids played for over an hour at the play land. We went back to the festival to finally check out some trees!
This display in honor of someone's dog they lost this year made me cry thinking about my Crumpy-Dump.
Unfortunately, after his already long day, Christian had had enough and went into meltdown. We only got to see a few of the gorgeous trees and then had to get my Buddy home.
On Dec 5 they came around the neighborhood fixing cracked sidewalks and curbing. We had several squares of our sidewalk ripped out and replaced a few days later. Christian was fascinated by the machinery and even secured several broken pieces of concrete as souvenirs (??).
On the 8th Buddy built marshmallow dudes (there is a candy cane spine in this one) and decorated them with frosting and colored sugar sprinkles. He took a whole bunch of pictures documenting his process, which is absolutely adorable!
On the 9th Ann came over with her kids for a play date. I had some sugar cookie dough waiting for the kids to roll out, cut and bake. They did such a cute job! I didn't make up any frosting, so they got creative and ate the cookies with raspberry-peach freezer jam.
That night Faith did a ballroom performance at somebody's ward Christmas party,
then we met up with Tammy and Zach at Panda Express for dinner. Afterward, Tam took the kids for a sleepover.
The next day Tony and I got to do some Christmas shopping without the kids (woo hoo!) and then picked them up late that afternoon from Tri City Nursery. They were having a holiday open house with free face painting, hot chocolate, cookies, visit with Santa,
and real reindeer.
On the11th after church we set about making rosette cookies. I had remembered making them with my Grandma Quinn and had asked her for the set of irons and recipe. They are a bit dangerous since they're deep fried, but I still let the kids help and we had some fun.
We brought some to my parents' for everyone to try, especially my grandma!
Tony had the day off on Dec. 16th, so he, Christian and I went and ate lunch with Faith at school. We got her out 20 minutes early (because they have early out on Fridays at 1:25) and went to the movies! We saw the new Muppet movie, but Buddy had fun with this display:
After the movie, we toured Ogden's Christmas Park and I nearly froze to death! It was probably not even
that cold, I just get cold easier these days.
We then had dinner at a favorite that we hadn't visited in a year--Lee's Mongolian. It was amazingly delicious! The best part is that they even went back to their original egg rolls!!! Instead of being in an egg roll wrapper, they are battered and then deep fried.
On the 17th Faith had her winter ballroom dance recital at Clearfield High. Here is one number where she didn't have a partner.
She was so cute and did such a great job! I think she was especially darling with one of her partners, Kyle Lortz, who's in her school class and in our ward. My mom & dad and Tammy came, but Larry had been in the hospital for a severe intestinal virus so he and Lana missed out.
On the 18th Christian passed an exciting milestone, he lost his first tooth! He is the exact opposite of Faith, who waits until the poor thing is hanging by a tiny string and then makes her dad pull it. Christian noticed that it was loose just a few days before and was trying to pull it out himself! Tony told him that it had to loosen up more first, but if he would push it back and forth then he would lose it sooner. While our home teacher was over, Buddy finally almost got it out and had his dad pop it out! Such a handsome, toothless little guy
❤
On Dec. 22nd we invited Ann and her kids over to do a Christmas craft with us. Unfortunately, when I stopped by Michael's Craft Store on the way home from my personal training appointment, Christian thew up all over their floor while I was in line to buy googly eyes. Buddy was so upset, but even more than feeling sick or embarrassed, he was throwing a fit because I didn't get the google eyes! Luckily, his dad picked them up for us that night and we made our felt finger puppets without the fun companionship of our friends. We were glad not to share that Christmas gift of tummy flu that just kept giving with our family!
