Pre-Christmas

Christmas is always crazy, and this year was no exception. Along with the normal family preparations, and the preparations for the travel, we had the preschool, first grade, and primary preparations. Here was my December...

I did another 10 for 10 card party. I love doing them, and I love having time to sit and chat, but I can't say that they are totally stress free. I seem to be completely unable to function without procrastinating. I always wait until the last moment to do anything. This was no exception. I received a large quantity of new supplies and wanted to try a bunch of them out. There was a lot of fun stuff, but I probably should have slowed the pace a bit. Here are a few of the cards we did this year:

Next up were the school Christmas parties. I had wonderful parents that did the parties for the preschool, so I just had to attend. After those were finished I was in charge of the "winter party" for T's first grade class. I was a little stressed when I found out that I was actually going to end up as the orchestrator for ALL of the first grade classes. The hardest part about planning parties for public schools is the fact that they are not holiday parties at all. This one had to be a winter party...no reindeer, no Santa, no elves, not even a wreath or some holly. So, what did we do? We ended up making marshmallow igloos and snowmen. The igloos were not edible, but the snowmen were, and the kids LOVED it. I ended up with more help than I anticipated from the other moms, which was a huge relief. The best part? T was THRILLED to have me in her class. There will come a day when my little angel will be embarrassed to have her mother at things like that, so I was really enjoying listening to her tell people that "it was

her mom's idea" or that "her mom was in charge." She had fun, so it was all worth it.

The Sunday before Christmas is always fun because the kids get to wear their new clothes! This year we had added excitement because the girls' dresses were being made just for them (no, NOT by me!!). They turned out gorgeous! The wonderful seamstress, Jacqui, also made a little bow tie for my little man. Let's be honest. They looked great!

That Sunday I had meetings before church, so I got the girls' hair etc. done so that Daddy could just put on clothes and come. When they met me at the church they looked great! YAY Daddy! After only a couple of quick pictures in the foyer, Owen started freaking out. He kept saying that there was something in his nose and it hurt. Well, duh! His finger is always up his nose, so maybe he should stop picking his nose and it would stop hurting. That's what his extremely sympathetic mother said. Then he screamed, "THERE'S A BEAD IN MY NOSE!" What?!? Sure enough, he had stuck a bead up his nose. The priceless picture below is so perfectly my kids. T making a weird face, Liz messing with her mouth, and O screaming about something up his nose.

Thank heavens for our wonderful friends/medics, the Perrys who were able to use the chapel as a clinic that afternoon and fish out the offending bead.

That night we went over to Nana and Papa's house for dinner. Then we got to have a mini Christmas celebration since we were going to be out of town.

Just a couple of days before we left we had a surprise visitor. Santa himself stopped by (he had been delivering gifts to people in the ward, and had some extra time). The kids were amazed! The real Santa is so tall, and so happy! After he left they spent a lot of time debating about whether this was the real Santa or just a helper....I am pretty sure he had them convinced!