The Week Before Christmas

Since our last day of school for the year was the 18th, we were able to leave town right away and spend the entire week before Christmas in Utah. We loved spending time with family and we enjoyed some great activities. The first day we arrived Bailee and I spent the afternoon at Hale Centre Theatre.

One of Bailee's gifts this year was 2 tickets to see A Christmas Carol. My parents used to take us to see this play every year. The last time I went was when Mark and I were newlyweds. 

I forgot how much I loved this! So, I was pretty happy she asked me to go with her;) The actor who plays Scrooge is different now, it was the same guy every year I saw the play with my family. It was fun to hear all the familiar lines and see all the familiar scenes, but just as fun to notice the slight changes they have made to the show.

The best part was getting to share it with one of my favorite girls in the world!

 

That evening we headed to the Morris house to put together "Goody Bags" for the Homeless Shelter. We had a lot of helpers so we got done pretty quickly but it was fun to be together and chat.

 We decided to add a little Holiday card to each bag. This was the perfect way for the little ones to get involved .... and the big kids made some pretty great cards as well.

 The kits all ready to go spread some cheer!

 Karsyn and Emmrey had a sleepover at Jami's that night so it was just Bailee and the old folks for the night. She LOVED every minute of it;)

 We met up with the Weavers the next day at In-N-Out for the kid exchange

 

Wednesday we woke up to a decent amount of snow. Mark and I went out early and did some shoveling

 Then we warmed up inside while we waited for Jenn to bring the kiddos over while she and Ashlee went to a class. Cooper wasn't too sure about me. Of course, he hasn't had a lot of time to get to know me;) Once I got out the MAGFORMERS, he settled right in and we talked and played.

These 2 cuties snuck off to the basement and played games together. They had so much fun!

sporting their bracelets from Grandma

Later that afternoon Me, Mark, Bailee, Karsyn and Ashlee went to the Rescue Mission to volunteer. We loaded up our kits and were able to hand them out to those still finishing their meal.

 We helped with the clean up and any other odd jobs they needed. It wasn't quite as rewarding as serving the meal but we were just happy to help.

 

Thursday morning we met Ashlee, Jenn and the kids at Gardner Village to do the Elf Scavenger Hunt. We have done the Witches in the fall and this one was just as fun. It was colder than the fall for sure, but so festive. I just love that place!

 We found all sorts of Elves in all sorts of scenarios.

 After most of our searching was done, we went in to the bakery to enjoy some Hot Chocolate (or juice for my little buddy;)

 Then we headed back out and finished up, making sure to get all our papers filled out for the prize.

 The treat was found in the Chocolate Covered Wagon

 A piece of Old Fashioned Taffy for everyone!!

 It was a fun way to spend the morning of a looong day waiting for the big guy.

(Cooper wasn't really interested in all the photos I was taking)

Believe it or not, we did have some down time and we spent it putting together a Christmas puzzle.  I love a good puzzle and decided we should have one to work on at my parents. I ordered a 1000 piece puzzle that we worked on for days. It was a doozy! Not just because it had so many pieces, but so many were all blue or all white. Karsyn wanted nothing to do with it, Mark could only stand it for short stints, Emmrey put in a few pieces.

 Even my mom helped out. 

 

 Many tinkered with a piece here and there, but only the real warriors stuck with it. 

It was close, but I am happy to say we did complete that thing.... just in time to take it apart and put it back in the box to go home:(

Sister Sock Exchange

We did something a little different this year for the girls gift exchange. They each drew a name and bought that sister a pair of cozy socks and filled them with surprises. It was completely up to them what they filled the socks with. The only requirement was that it had to fit in the socks and be purchased with their own $$. We did it the morning we left for Utah so we could really focus on that gift exchange separately from the rest.

 I love how excited Emm is about giving her gift....look at that face!

 She filled Karsy's socks with EOS, Sour Patch Kids, Mentos and Starbucks Cocoa. I think she loved it!

 Bay got cute Santa socks ...

It was filled with Hand Sanitizer, Clif Bar, EOS lotion, gum and...deodorant! Karsyn cracked herself up by getting Bailee Old Spice deodorant. Apparently one time Bailee had mentioned that she really liked the smell of it and Kars remembered this and thought it would be perfect for her socks. Bay thought it was pretty funny too!

She even tried it out:)

Emmrey opened Penguin socks

She was thrilled to find another pair of cozy socks, hair ties, special lotion for the dry little hands and Hot Tamales

I loved how the girls all picked out things that were so fitting. They weren't big or expensive, just items that spoke to how well they know each other:)

Puck Sightings

Our few weeks with Puck around were pretty mild...thank goodness! It consisted of a hunt to find him in a new spot each day. Some days were trickier than others, but none of that naughty business. He followed us to Grandpa & Grandmas house, they definitely had better places to hide among all their decorations:)

Of course Puck never gets away without a stack of letters to deliver to Santa. Some years they are left in an envelope. This year Emmrey made a special mailbox to leave them in. The letters came from the students in Miss Alise's class. There was a stack (yes a STACK) of personalized letters each in a slightly different handwriting. Whew...that is some dedication! Santa must have been too busy (or lazy;) to respond to all 20+ letters. He just wrote one reply to the class.

The best thing about Pucks visit this year was the cozy blanket he left with us. Emmrey enjoyed every minute she could wrapped up in it.

SNOW DAY!

The Tuesday before we left for Utah we had a SNOW DAY! We had already had a decent size storm a couple of days prior which resulted in the snowman named "Dude" out front.

By Monday night I was expecting the worst and so Mark offered to take Bailee to 5 am swim practice. When they left that morning the storm hadn't hit very hard yet, but by 6 am I had received several messages that school and all activities were cancelled. The bummer was that Bailee also had a derm appointment that morning, so instead of coming straight home after practice dismissed, they had to kill time in FoCo on bad roads. The girls were thrilled (although they won't be come make up day:) It looked like this all day. It doesn't look terribly bad, but the visibility was awful.

Once we all were back together (Mark stayed home as well), it was a perfect day to hunker down, snuggle up and watch Christmas movies.

Holiday Gala

 A couple of weeks before Christmas, we had a little at home Talent Show of sorts. I wanted to motivate the girls to practice their instruments and actually perform for us so I came up with this awesome idea 6 weeks earlier. The gist of it was that if they could perform it proficient enough to do it on a stage, they would earn a little holiday cash as a reward. You give Emmrey any sort of incentive program and she will become a little obsessed about it:/ She made up this handy program timed to the minute.

Emmrey did several little dance numbers for us. She had choreographed them fresh with moves from her recital the week before. She danced to Frosty the Snowman, Hot Chocolate, Jingle Bell Rock, and Santa Baby

 She also played We Wish You a Merry Christmas on her Ukulele. She hasn't had any proper lessons on it yet, so it was improvised.

Kars treated us to four numbers on her guitar, including Little Do You Know (Alex & Sierra), Bleeding Out (Imagine Dragons), Rudolph and Jingle Bell Rock. She did such a good job. Bailee was tentatively put on the program. In the end she opted to not participate, feeling like she hadn't had enough practice time to do her piano songs justice....maybe another time.

 * I have videos of all their performances, but will respect the wishes of my girls to

 "not post them on the blog"

Santa House

Our girls have never been big fans of sitting on Santa's lap. Most years resulted in something like this...

this photo screams "mom hurry up and take the picture, we're barely hanging on here!"

The past few years we haven't even pushed the subject, cause quite frankly we get it. Sitting on the lap of a stranger in a red suit is a little weird.  Our girls have been perfectly satisfied with letter writing being their sole means of communication with the big guy. So, we were a little surprised when Emmrey decided she did in fact want to go see Santa this year. We picked an evening last week to go and then swim and basketball practice got in the way. On Saturday we told Emmrey we would go for sure (that girl likes a firm commitment;) Turns out that day a snow storm rolled in. We knew that the house sits in Old Town Square and we could potentially be outdoors. I also figured it would not be a super popular day for visiting for the same reason. Well we spent nearly an hour standing out it this wet snow .. ..

  They had a mailbox there as another option, but Emm wanted to stick it out.

 

 She didn't complain a bit so we didn't have an out even if we wanted one. There were only about 5 groups in line before us, but that line was not budging.

 

We finally had our turn with the Old Time Santa. He was very patient and took his time talking to Emm. They had it all set up with photographers who were more than willing to take pictures.We opted to snap our own pic as opposed to paying a small fortune for the photo shoot  (shocked that people pay for that). Needless to say, that shortened our time in the house and I am sure the families behind us were appreciative;) 

  Bay and Kars kept warm and dry by spending the time looking through shops on the square. They met up with us just in time to run for the car. Emmrey was happy she made the visit, but she just wasn't sure whether that was the "real Santa" or not?