Christmas Adam and Eve

I love Christmas trees lit up in the dark.  They make me feel peaceful. Here's our Blue tree (our old, smaller tree, which has become a BYU tree!) in the front room, and our big colorful tree covered in a variety of ornaments in the family room.

Gingerbread making! This was actually the day before Christmas Adam.  On Christmas Adam the big kids and Eric went skiing.

This was the first time Emma has really decorated her whole house, it was way cute!

Maris was especially proud of her Mint Mnm fence.

Also shout-out to the cute countdown Grammy made with the kids when we got to see her after Thanksgiving. It cute-ed up the laundry room, and was a fun surprise every day.

Christmas Eve we got to have Grandma and Grandpa and Lauren and Kurtis over! It was fun to act out the Nativity.  Here's Mary and Joseph in the stable.

Angel surprising the shepherds:

Shepherds worshiping and the Holy Family,

And our 4 wise men bringing their gifts.

Cast photo:

And that was our Christmas Eve.  Plus the part where Emma fell asleep at 7pm and woke up chipper at 10!  Making last-minute preparations very difficult....  She finally went back to sleep at 12:30am!  A Crazy Christmas Eve for mom and dad haha.
 

December Highlights

One thing we did over Christmas break was service.  We worked on some items for the Lily Pad Project (bereavement kits for families of stillborn babies), and also tied these fleece blankets again for Lifting Hands International to pass out at refugee camps. 

The Sunday before Christmas we got to sing in church!   We sang Away in a Manger in parts and basically it was my dream come true.  Eric already knew the tenor part, and Katelyn showed her newfound harmony singing skills by learning the alto part to sing a little duet in the 2nd verse with Whitney.  Emma and Maris adorably learned the last 2 lines of the 2nd verse and made everyone cry with their sweet little duet. Our friend came up with a piano arrangement and it turned out so good.  I loved every second of it and made everyone perform it for Grandma and Grandpa too (and record it on Marco Polo for my fam).

Emma had her first dance recital!!  It was ADORABLE of course, and she took it way more seriously than Maris ever did, it was so funny and cute.

Emma second from the left.

Oh quick side note, she and Hayley took some cute Christmas pictures at the last preschool before Christmas.

Emma after her recital, with flowers from Grandma.

Such a cute little Christmas portrait! She loves to pose.

Everyone had fun supporting Emma.

One of my favorite things about this Christmas season was the secret person name drawings and service. This is one thing Maris did for me when she had me for her secret person. We had such a great feeling of love and concern for each other, more than usual, because of the service and thinking of others that went on all month!  It was wonderful.

We got to help Grandma and Grandpa make and set up luminaries for their ward luminary tradition.

I made a nativity one. :)

more blanket making- Even Emma learned how to tie knots for this!  So cool!

And, Maris got to go skiing for the first time and she LOVED it!!!!

 

Sand dune fun!

In November, we had another mini-quarantine.  The governor called for a 2-week shutdown of all extracurricular activities.  The day after Katelyn's show ended!! Blessing!!

So suddenly our schedule was wiped clean again.

Eric surprised us one Friday night by suggesting we go to the sand dunes the next day.  Fun idea!  We were going to make tin foil dinners and have a fire....but at the last minute scrapped that and just got pizza on the way home haha.

Anyway it was a fun last hurrah of warm-ish weather before the cold really set in!

Katelyn and Emma enjoying the sand:

Maris did a hilarious slow motion face slide, and got SUPER dirty haha.

Eric had fun taking slow-mo jumping videos of the kids, and I got a picture of me and Kate's twin-ness!

Cute kids jumping off the hill:

Also we had fun with panoramic trick pictures!

Here's Eric leading the kids down a path strewn with poky weeds- they were trying to follow exactly in his footsteps so they could be safe. Lots of possible metaphors here!

cute portrait of Emma.

We also enjoyed a bunch of catch and volleyball before heading home.

And lastly, a little add-on to this post.  In November Emma got on a note-writing kick (to mimic Maris' last year or so of intense note-writing!)

She got this little notepad with attached pen from the dollar store, and wrote literally hundreds of these cute little notes!  They usually included a little picture of her and the person the note was for, maybe some clouds and the sun, maybe other details.  Then on the outside, her name and theirs on one side, and a drawn-on envelope back!  So cute!!

They were lying around everywhere in the house, so I saved a couple and took a picture of these before I threw them away.

Once she used up that notepad, her note-writing has decreased significantly, so I'm glad we have this picture to remind us of a fun month in Emma's life. :)