December

I was admittedly slightly exhausted after Thanksgiving and then at the thought of preparing for Christmas (and the first Christmas we would be hosting at our house). I really hadn't even thought through gifts or anything, but wanted to squeeze in as many fun Christmas things as possible. So after convincing Ben we needed a bigger tree, and ordering and running to different stores to check gifts off the list, I was ready to embrace the month!

A few things we did that I don't have pictures of:
   -teaching Paige new Christmas songs (her versions are quite entertaining)
   -picking up multiple shattered ornaments (Deacon can reach higher than I thought), and picking up the shatter-proof ones that Deacon used as bouncy balls. He would also just pull hard enough that the tops would pop off.
   -trying to read Christmas books everyday
   -attempting to bring in some of the real meaning of Christmas by getting a name of a little girl in need and taking Paige to buy presents for her
   -making Ben drive way too long in search of some Christmas lights I had "heard' about, only to have our phone batteries run out, get lost, and have to stop at a gas station for directions. And we never found the lights...
   -singing in the ward choir's Christmas program (first time I've been a true ward choir-goer)
   -eating all the treats Ben's cute primary kids brought him

-Santa came to our neighborhood park! Paige loved it and chatted it up with him. Deacon pretty much freaked out.

-We went to an ugly sweater party where I got to done my mom's sweater she used to wear. Thanks Janet!

-We bought chairs for the piano room and they came in the best boxes ever. The kids spent many hours playing in this "sleigh" and pretending to be Santa.

-This visit to the temple we decided to make it a family trip and just swap who was in and who was with the kids. They loved wandering the grounds (on what happened to be a super sunny day) and looking at the giant nativity. Then we topped things off with lunch at Chipotle.

-We said goodbye to my parents' dog, Leo, which was much harder than I thought it would be. This also involved us watch the movie, "All Dogs Go to Heaven"...kind of an odd one.

 -We watched a whole lot of Christmas movies. This was so fun! The Grinch, Elf, Elf the Musical, Prepped and Landing, Hallmark movies, all kinds of different ones.

-We went to the Frisco Square celebration...with apparently everyone else in the town- it was packed! We rushed to get there in time for parachuting santa, but go figure it was too cloudy so santa came in a convertible instead. But we loved seeing all the lights, eating a funnel cake, doing crafts, laughing at the ridiculous lines to build a snowman with the snow they provided and the ramp to go "sledding" (Paige was too short and burst into tears when we told her, and we let her just take a picture with the snowman instead of waiting multiple hours), and watching the fireworks. Love our little town!