Christmas

This year we spent Christmas at home for the first time since having kids and probably since our first Christmas as a married couple. It was nice celebrating just us.

James had school up through the 23rd. It didn't give us much time to start celebrating before actual Christmas, but we squeezed in some Christmas fun before hand anyway.

At the beginning of December, we were able to volunteer to help with our Stake's Creche Festival.  Tracy got to spend our shift in with the displays and I spent it in the children's room. This was the first time we had ever gone and we regretted not going or volunteering the previous years.

The boys helped me decorate the Christmas tree one afternoon. This tree I got off of a wonderful Facebook Group called Buy Nothing. Our previous tree hadn't survived it's time being stored on the patio the first year we moved in. It was the only place we could store it and it became moldy so we had to toss it. Then I found this one for free through the buy nothing group. It really added to the Christmas spirit.

The relief society activity for December was a cookie exchange. I attempted to make, pepper cookies,  a recipe that had been in Tracy's family for many years. His great-grandma used to make a very large amount. I'm talking about over 50 dozen of these cookies at Christmas time. I have a quartered recipe from Tracy's mom and I tried to scale it back some more for the exchange. They didn't quite turn out right, but still presentable. However, I never baked all the cookies or went to the exchange because the flu bug hit our house. :(

Also in December the scout troop for pack meeting that month rang the bell for The Salvation Army. Our ward helps The Salvation Army to ring the bell at the post office collection spot for a couple of days in December every year. They split of the days into a few hour shifts that you can sign up for as individuals, families, etc. So the scout troop signed up for one of the shift. Afterwards, they enjoyed hot chocolate and cookies at our apartment just a few blocks away.

James went with Tracy. He had a lot of fun hanging out with the bigger boys.

One of the last days of school before the break James' class made Gingerbread houses. Tracy since his school break had already started over a week prior, volunteered to help out.

James painted his teacher a picture of a sea turtle for her Christmas present. I helped a bit with the outline of the turtle, mostly fattening up the flippers, he had them pretty skinny. And then again with the shell lines and textures on the head and flippers. It turned out amazing. In case you're wondering why a sea turtle, each class at his school has an animal associated with it. This year he's in the sea turtle class. Last year he was in the coyote class. 

Once school was out we didn't waste anytime kicking off the holiday vacation. The afternoon of the 23rd after we picked James up from school we took the boys to the train museum.

Christmas Eve was spent finishing up our prep for the big day. Then that night after dinner we opened our Christmas Jammies and drove around looking at lights. After putting Charles to bed, James made another gingerbread house with leftovers from his class houses his teacher gave us while watching The Muppets' Christmas Carol.

I didn't pictures of the boys opening presents. I'm not sure if we even got any... oh, well. I did get a picture of the tea light candle holder James made me. <3 p="">

The days following Christmas before school started back up, we spent some quality time together:

Lunch at wing stop. James had to bring all his mini Thomas and friends trains. After lunch Tracy took James to see the Rogue One. 

In between rain storms we enjoyed a park afternoon. It was cold and very windy but otherwise had fun.

I took advantage of both James and Tracy being out of school and treated James to a lunch date. He choose Black Bear Dinner. It was especially fun that we ran into Ms. Tammy, the school secretary, there. She's the best school secretary ever!

These two fought a lot during the break. They aren't use to spending soo much time together. However I did find ways to get them to play nicely together.

We threw our own little New Year's Party. On the menu was things I could cook in my new deep fryer: French Fries and Fried Chicken. Then we, minus Charles, enjoyed games and movies till we realized it was 12:30 and we had missed ringing in the new year.

Soon the break was over. The older boys went back to school. Charles missed James. One morning he wanted to wear his backpack and go to school like big brother.