Christmas week

Friday the kids went to see the Shepherd Play at City Garden. Afterwards, Cecelia came over and they were very into playing "Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus" for a long time. Claire was a store keeper or something.

We attempted taking a Christmas card picture. This is Matt trying to set up the camera on a tripod. Heehee.

We had lots of failed attempts. My head kept getting chopped off.

Or Luella was grabbing me or I wasn't looking. Wait. Why am I the problem in all of these?

Eh, this was the best one I guess. But Luella is sucking her hand. Sammy had just gotten his hair cut and his ears stick out his hair is so short!

We went to church and the kids sang up front.

Well, most of them did. Sam wouldn't go up.  

Claire sang like a good girl though. The little boy in front of Claire is Jacob. He's so cute. Look at HIS family's Christmas card!

Check out his mommy with her cute little jacket and belt! I mean seriously, people, don't send me stuff like this! Haha. Just kidding. Please do. They are just too cute is all. 

Claire got a new hand-me-down Christmas dress this last Saturday. Perfect timing! That's Matt packing our diaper bag stuff up in the background. Teehee.

We've wrapped most of the presents.

And we've been collecting lots of beautiful Christmas cards to display on the fireplace.

And we've sipped a little of this. Well, Matt and I have.

Sunday NIGHT we had the church Christmas party.

We brought Annabel.

That is Mr Bo, who is in Matt's small group. My kids call all grown ups Mr or Ms but then use their first name. Is that okay? That seems to be what people are doing these days. I don't think I knew any grown ups first names until I was about 15.

Finally, on Monday, we had our West Side Ladies meeting. (It's the fake girl scouts that we made up, remember?) There is usually about a good hour of the kids playing either before or after our craft/project. Apparently Sammy was a police officer/knight/cowboy who picked up a stunningly beautiful Chinese girl and Snow White while he was on patrol.

We lit the lanterns that the kids made a few weeks ago....

...and went caroling!

It was snowing outside and very gleamy and beautiful.

The kids were really cute carolers. Not everyone answered the door and a few people requested to NOT be caroled to, but all in all it was successful.

Lanterns on a stick if you can see that. I'm having camera issues.

They had a good time, but it did get cold by the end.

Pretty street in the snow.

We congregated at Bridget's afterwards where the daddies were having a little men's part of their own. We set that up for them and Bridget made them a lot of good food and drinks. Lucky warm men. We were frozen!

This morning we were all home since Sammy is on vacation from his school, and everyone needed a bath so I decided to go old school and just throw them all in together. They loved squeezing all of Luella's sweet chubby parts.

And Sam wanted a photo session of himself...

...and himself with Luella.

She didn't last long.

Here is hoping you get to do all the fun Christmasy stuff you were hoping to do before the big day! We're trying to cram stuff in. We haven't hit the Christkindlemarket or the Santa Train yet, so we'll see if that happens. I'm just happy for a day home finally.