December was such a wonderful month! We had so much fun celebrating and getting ready for Christmas. Both kids are at such a fun age. We spent the month singing Christmas songs, watching Christmas movies, and singing even more Christmas songs!
Here are some of our many festivities:
The Festival of Trees
I love going to the Festival of Trees and see all the amazing displays.
Ian loved all the Disney displays and cars/trucks trees, of course.
Kirstie was thrilled to find two trees with Alice in Wonderland. I really don't know where is love for Alice came from (she hated the Alice ride at Disneyland), but she just loves her.
Next, it was time to decorate our tree! At our house we have two trees. The one upstairs is the one that I get to choose how it's decorated. It's the "fancy" tree. But our tree downstairs is my favorite. We decorate it with ornaments collected through the years-- homemade ornaments, ones from vacations, the kids each have one from their first Christmases, some that students gave me when I was teaching, and lots more.
We like to call him "Schroeder" cuz he reminds us of the Peanuts character. Ian loves to play the piano-- even if he's pretending that the folding chair is the piano. He loves to get out my piano books. I have some old piano student books and those are his favorites. He calls them his "Abbie books." Abbie is one of my piano students who often helps her sister babysit our kids.
Of course, we had our ward Christmas party. The Primary kids put on an impromptu nativity scene and sang a couple of songs. Kirstie and her friend Elise just kinda stood in the middle of it all. It was actually pretty cute.
Ian once again saw Santa Claus. He just loves him! There is no hesitation on his part-- when it's his turn, he runs over to Santa, sits right down and has a nice talk with him. Kirstie, again, did NOT want to see him. She cried when he came into the cultural hall. Once I got her calmed down and assured that she didn't have to see him, the line of kids to see Santa was forever long and we were at the end of it. After Ian's turn, Kirstie hid along the wall, and I did the talking for her. Lucky for her, Santa promised to bring her a Sleeping Beauty barbie.
Kirstie's preschool class had a Christmas party on the last day of school. They drew names to give presents and she bought a spiderman coloring kit for Cutler. She was so excited to give it to him! At the party their class exchanged gifts, when caroling to the next-door neighbor, and Santa came. I wasn't sure how she'd react to him, so I gave her teacher a heads up on her fear of Santa. But she did ok. Her teacher helped her talk to Santa and she felt pretty proud of herself. Her favorite part was hearing Santa's reindeer and sleigh on the roof!!
She came home with a gift from her teacher Mrs. King---
--a snowglobe.
Her friend Own gave her a Hello Kitty necklace. She's worn it almost every day!
A Christmas tradition we have with Brent's family is to rotate each year going to one of the siblings' houses for dinner and activities. This year we went to Brian and Charises's house. We ate yummy homemade Cafe Rio salads and then drove through the lights at Thanksgiving Point. Afterwards we went and saw two of Santa's reindeer. Kirstie told us that they were Cupid and Blitzen. Both kids loved it and asked many times to go back.
Just before Christmas we had Kirstie's friends, and their younger siblings, over to our house for a Christmas party. Ian, Celeste, and Eliza were really cute together. I need to have him play with friends more often.
Kirstie, Amber, Elise and Tom had fun making reindeer crafts, playing games, singing songs, and decorating cupcakes. They also did a little gift exchange. Kirstie gave Amber a Hello Kitty whiteboard and she got a butterfly glow stick from Tom.
Although the kids had seen Santa (Ian many times), we still wrote letters to Santa. Ian asked for a truck (he will later get a total of 6 trucks for Christmas, not including the 7 hot wheels Santa brought.)
Ian found that he could stick his letter in the side of the fridge and it would stick there. He called it his mailbox.
We took the letters to the mall and put them in the special Santa mailbox there.
Growing up, one of my favorite family traditions was sleeping around the Christmas tree. My mom would make clam chowder, we would watch a Christmas movie (gotta love A Very Brady Christmas), and all the kids would sleep downstairs around the tree. I was so excited to continue this tradition with my family (minus the clam chowder-- darn picky eaters!)
We ate lots of treats and watched a couple of short movies. Ian and daddy went upstairs to sleep in their own beds while Kirstie and I watched more movies and slept downstairs. Kirstie would not go to sleep. She stayed up until about 11:00, when we finally turned off the tv (we thought she'd fall asleep watching a movie-- Brent and I did!). One of the movies we watched was Polar Express which quickly became a favorite of Kirstie's. She watched it countless times during the holidays and we listened to the soundtrack endlessly in the car. When we weren't watching it or listening to it, she was singing it. Even Ian got pretty good at singing the songs!
"Asleep"
All dressed up for church!!
Here is another favorite tradition-- making sugar cookies! I wish I'd gotten a picture of Ian wearing his "apron." Whenever Kristie and/or I put our aprons on, he gets out a small bib from when he was younger and puts that on for his apron.
It was nice to have Brent at home for this. He's never made these cookies with us because he's always been working, but this year we made them on a Sunday. I was happy to sit back and let him have this "fun" experience with the kids.
Each December 23rd we have a big family dinner with all of Brent's extended family. After dinner we play Bingo and when you get "Christmas" you get to open a present. Grandma and Grandpa Bunting have Ian this handsome outfit.
And they gave Kirstie and Payton cute matching outfits.
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