Christmas Celebrations!

We did our best to celebrate Christmas and enjoy the holidays.  We even bought a few things!  Crazy huh!  We bought a new wreath for our door and we put out a few strands of lights on our bushes.  That's the most outdoor decorating we have ever done!  Haha.  

We also bought some snowflake sheets for our bed.  I've really enjoyed them this winter.

We took pictures in front of the Christmas tree whenever we could. Here's Kira all ready for school.  She thought it would be fun to wear these Minnie mouse ears to school.

The Christmas shirts from the previous post were worn to our church Christmas breakfast party.

Noah did not want to be in the picture without daddy.  I tried to cut dad out of the picture, but you can see Noah holding his hand.

Oh well.  Dad looks cute too.  :)

Nels made 50 pancakes and I made a strawberry syrup for the party.  They were a hit and all the pancakes were gone super fast.  Here's our family, plus a friend.

The primary did a great job with the nativity story.  I totally forgot to bring a doll for baby Jesus.  Luckily, we were able to get a doll from the nursery.  Phew!

I didn't know what to do for Isak and Kira...so they wore the puppy and bunny blanket...kind of out of place.  But oh well.  

Then we visited Santa.  Noah didn't want anything to do with him.  But the other three were pretty excited.

Sofie was so excited and scared all at the same time.  She shyly said, "Skye Costume" when he asked her what she wanted for Christmas.  Isak asked for a pedometer and Kira asked for pink paper.  :)

Then we all went to the library for some fun.

Isak played with these pattern shapes.

Kira and Sofie colored and decorated snowflakes and hot chocolate mugs.

Noah played with the cash register.

No one wanted to go downtown third street to see the decorations and band.  Isak was sweet and came with me.

So I took his picture at a few places while Nels drove around the block with the other kids.  It was chilly.  But I'm glad we took a few minutes to see stuff.

Nels and I got to go to a Christmas White Elephant Party.  Our babysitter cancelled last minute, but we were able to find one last minute.  So we got to enjoy an evening out together.  We ate delicious food, played foosball and opened gifts.  There was a hot chocolate bar.  I put raspberry syrup in mine.  Mmmm.  Nels beat me at foosball twice!  Our gifts we ended up with...squatty potty and then a random collection of old stuff...it was weird.  Oh well.  We had a good time.

We also went on another date to Texas Roadhouse.  Yum!

One evening we loaded up the kids and went to the Larsen Light Show.

It was dark...but I tried to get a selfie of us anyways.  We parked the car and all of the kids sat on our laps in the front seat of the van.  I had the babies and half of Kira.

It was so fun to listen to the music and watch the lights.  We all loved it and we ate candy canes too.

Then we ate dinner at Red Robin.

Another night we made some chocolate peppermint candy cookies and took them to our neighbors.

We sent out Christmas Cards.  Our printer broke!  😡  So I ended up handwriting all of the addresses.   Fun, fun.

For my birthday, I got this hand lettering practice book.  I love doing it.  I'm not very good but it's enjoyable.  I wrote this note for Isak and Kira's school teacher and attached it to popcorn.

We got our printer to work.  I printed this one and attached it to popcorn and gave it to the people I visit for church.

Here's the ornaments the kids made at school.  So cute!

Kira was invited to a Christmas Tea Party.  Oh my.  It was the cutest thing ever.

They decorated gingerbread houses.

And ate dainty treats.

They had water to drink in these little tea cups.  Pinkies up.  😀

We watched Christmas movies all month. We watched the new nativity movie the church put out.  And Charlie Brown's Christmas, The Santa Clause, To Grandmother's House We Go (with the Olsen Twins) and Mickey Mouse Christmas Carol.  I got the movies from the library.  We enjoyed lots of snuggling!

Last day of school for Isak and Kira before Christmas break.  They wore their Christmas shirts.  Sadly, they both got sick (from Noah) and the school called and asked us to pick them up.  Nels had the day off so he picked them up in his car.  We weren't quite fast enough.  Kira threw up all over the back seat.  Gross!!!  And soon after, all four kids and me were throwing up for two days.  Yuck!!  Nels lucked out and didn't get sick...just probably got sick of taking care of us sickies!

But I love how happy these two 7 year olds are!!

My mom sent me a stamping up card making kit.  It was so fun to put together while I listened to Christmas music!

Sofie painted a gingerbread man for school.

Noah did too.

He was sick for the gingerbread jamboree.  So I went with Sofie.  Oh it was SO fun!!  There's my cute Sofie ringing her bells to the song and waving hi to me.

I played games with her.

We played with the best smelling gingerbread play dough.

And we painted a gingerbread man together.  A great day at her school.

And that's our before Christmas celebrations!!