Before Christmas!!

December started off right with a fun and beautiful gift from my mom.  It arrived wrapped in this pretty gift bag.

It's a Christmas piano book!  Yay!  I enjoyed it all month long and I look forward to playing it in  Christmas's to come!

I tried a new recipe - candy cane chocolate cookies.  They were delicious and easy to make!!  Definitely a keeper for the holidays.

We liked them so much we took some to our neighbors.  Sofie and Kira were my helpers.  Santa and Rudolph.

Love this picture...

We taste tested them too.

Mmmmm...

We got out some Christmas coloring books.  Noah wasn't interested, but these three had fun with it.

Sofie just wants to do exactly what the big kids are doing.  She's a cutie.

Isak and Kira drew these at school.

Decorating the Christmas tree.

Kira really liked decorating the tree this year.

The babies were pretty careful with the ornaments.  Phew!

Our new ornaments this year included this silver leaf from the Arboretum.

Kind of hard to see, but the Willis (Sears) Tower.

A snow globe of Chicago.

I didn't know if I took a pic of this one last year...our octopus from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Nels got to help out in primary.  :)

I find random pics on Nels's phone.  I thought this one was funny.  Nels loves his guitars...note...this is not his guitar, just one he thought was cool.

Christmas shirts.  Isak and Kira.

Sofie loved these penguin ornaments.

I still put jingle bells on the tree.  The babies loved taking them on and off and shaking them.

We sang Jingle Bells a lot this month. :)

I saw my friend make this snowman pancake on Instagram and thought it was cute and easy.  So I copied her.  :)

The kids thought it was fun, especially the sugar snow.

A picture before we left to go to the Peck Farm Christmas outing.  Noah and Isak had matching shirts.  Sofie was not happy.

I bought a reindeer shirt too!

We made lots of chocolate covered pretzels with crushed candy cane and Oreos.

One night we ate at Red Robin and then drove through a neighborhood in Aurora that has the Christmas story and then at the end Charlie Brown themed displays.

We took turns reading the signs.

Another night we drove to the Larsen's house.  It was so amazing and we will definitely keep this one for next year.  The house is timed with music.  The kids squished onto our laps on the front row of seats in our car and we all watched it together.

The kids made Christmas cards for their teacher Mrs. Spence.  

Isak wrote, "Thank you for being my teacher.  I like word work at team time.  From Isak."

Kira wrote, "I like when you read books to us!  Ho Ho Ho.  Thank you for being my teacher.  From Kira."

Isak and Kira learned about the Gingerbread Boy story.  They read four different versions of it.  One was the original story, one was a ninja, another was a girl gingerbread and the last one was a superhero.  They made all these different gingerbreads and then made an oven to put them in.  The oven is on the bottom of the picture.  They also learned how to draw a fox.

It was fun to talk about it with them and read the books too.

They also made these cute Christmas tree bags.

Nels and I went to a White Elephant Gift Exchange Party.  The kids stayed home with a sitter and we enjoyed the night out with friends.  There were some goofy gifts.  The funniest ones were the different outfits.  haha.  These four guys got the wigs and shirts.  Lots of laughs and yummy food too.

Kira was super sweet and made all of us a bookmark for Christmas.  She even made little gift tags to go with them.  I laminated them for her.  I love her creativity and thoughtfulness!  

She wrapped them up with a little help from me.  I was so proud of her for working so hard on them and finishing the project!

We made gingerbread houses from a kit...They each got a very little house to decorate.

This is Sofie's.  The babies definitely surprised me by how involved they were and how much they enjoyed it!

Here's Noah's.

Kira's house.

You can kind of see Isak's.  He tried to make his like the picture.  

Nels and the boys made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.  They were delicious.  Loved seeing them do something fun and yummy together.

And this year was extra special.  Someone did the 12 days of Christmas to us.  So fun!  They left a gift everyday for 12 days.  The gifts ended up being a whole nativity set and they gave one to us each day.  Sometimes other things were included like candy canes and cookies.  We looked forward to their knock every night.  They were fast at running away after ringing the doorbell!  We sure enjoyed the surprise and it made Christmas even more fun.  So thank you to our mystery giver!

So those are the things we did before Christmas.  Lots of prep, shopping, activities, sweets and fun.