Christmas 2014

I know the rest of the blog world was sharing their Christmas recaps, oh, a month or more ago, but I am just now feeling like we're getting back on track after the holidays. I thought about skipping the Christmas recap, but it was a fun season for us and Baby C's first Christmas!

On Black Friday we headed out to a nearby Christmas Tree farm to cut down a tree. We went with two other families. Six adults and eight kids in search of three trees. Santa was there too, so we got a quick visit. The only thing the girls asked Santa for this year was books. Loved that!

Miss A was not too happy to have to break away from her friends to get our tree, and Baby C slept through most of it, but Little J was such a little trooper. She helped E cut down the tree, then pulled the tree back all the way to the warming house.

This year was the first year Miss A was able to participate in the Christmas program at church. The children's music director is wonderful, and put together a baseball themed Christmas program that was very cute. She writes the play and songs, then sends a CD home with all the kids so they can practice. We listened to the CD every day in the car. The girls LOVED it. Little J was upset that we weren't still singing Christmas songs at church this morning. One of the songs had "glory, glory" in it. Little J sings it all the time, but glory comes out more like, "gory, gory." Makes me smile every time. 

Miss A also had a short program at preschool. My favorite part was when they gave all of the 3, 4 and 5 year olds bells and tried to sing Jingle Bells. I think every kid was singing a different part of the song. So funny! The teachers had them try again without the bells and they did very well.

We only had two weeks between Little J's birthday party/Baby C's baptism and Christmas, so we tried to fit a few Christmas activities in. Miss A and Little J made salt dough ornaments. This was our first attempt at salt dough, but it went pretty well. We hung a few ornaments on our tree and took a few to the grandparents too.

The weekend before Christmas we went to Wisconsin to celebrate with my family. Little J got a fever Friday night, then Miss A followed Saturday. They did pretty well for the weekend, but after celebrating with my mom and family Saturday they were a little extra tired on Sunday. After celebrating with my dad's family on Sunday Little J put herself in bed for a quick nap. Even sick, the girls had a lot of fun and were seriously spoiled by my family.

Christmas day we didn't have to do anything or go anywhere, and it was wonderful. We were all just starting to get over being sick, so it was nice to be able to relax at home. When the girls woke up we opened stockings, then made monkey bread for breakfast. We tried not to go overboard with presents, so Santa just brought each girl a book, a kid's nativity set for all three girls and some new plates for the family. Miss A and Little J are really particular about the color of their plates, so they were super excited to get some new plates. They also got a few gifts from us, but nothing too big.

Little J's book, Pete the Cat has been a HUGE hit!

The girls really liked playing with their nativity set. I packed it away with our Christmas stuff a few weeks after Christmas, but in the weeks it was out, they played with it a lot. There were a lot of strange guests visiting Baby Jesus, including Elsa, Anna, Belle and Boots the monkey.

We got Baby C a wooden block puzzle with insects on it for her main gift. We've gotten a nice wooden present for each of the girls' first Christmas so it can be something we save for them when they are older.