It's Almost Christmas!

It's almost the big day and the kids in our house could not be more excited! Adam is trying to figure out a way to sleep all through Christmas Eve so it can be Christmas faster. We have been keeping busy with lots of Christmas activities. 

Last week, Gwen and 2 of the kids Mommy babysits painted snowflakes. They loved getting to paint (always a favorite activity) and Mommy was glad to have them occupied happily for 30 minutes. 

 Adam was worried about wearing his red Santa hat during the big BYU/Utah rivalry game last weekend. Mommy had to fix that problem and he was thrilled!

 Saturday was our fun day up at Spring Haven for the Nielson Christmas Party. We had so much fun visiting with our family. The kids were so happy to go play at the "big cabin". Some of the uncles were teasing Uncle Lynn and Uncle Kevin, saying that it's not everyday you have a general authority and a lawyer cooking you breakfast. 

 Gwen spent a good chunk of her day playing air hockey. 

 Tessa and Eve became fast friends and spent the day playing make believe together. 

 And Caleb loved the slides!!

 There is always such fun teasing and laughing during games and gift exchanges. 

 Mommy and Caleb got some quiet snuggle time.

 Mette let the girls play her harp. They were in heaven!!

We got all of our holiday baking done early this week. Yummy!!

 Monday evening, we delivered treats and presents to neighbors, friends, and primary teachers. It wore poor Gwennie out. 

 Tuesday was a snowy day, we we hunkered down and had a game day. We played domino's, jenga, Uno, and a couple others. 

 We have read almost every Christmas book we own this month. That's quite the accomplishment if you know how many Christmas books we have!!

Tessa and Gwen decided to play "Nativity" this week. Tessa told me they wanted to play it so they could feel the spirit. 

 We all loved Mary's dinosaur slippers. 

 They took their parts quite seriously. Tessa played Mary and Gwen played Elizabeth. Adam and Caleb had to play all the boy parts of the story, so they were busy with frequent costume changes. 

Mommy made reindeer pancakes for breakfast. Adam was really the only one happy to see them. Both girls only like butter on their pancakes. 

 We had our friends over for some last minute cookie decorating for Santa. Mommy came up with some fun cookie designs and the kids decorated their own cookies. I'm pretty sure more frosting ended up in their bellies than on any cookies. 

We started something new this year and put up what we call our Jesus tree. It has ornaments with names of the Savior and pictures to correlate with those names. For a couple of weeks now, we have added a new ornament and picture to the tree and talked about our Savior each day leading up to Christmas. It has brought such a special spirit into our home and the kids have asked me several times if we can do this every year. I am so grateful that they have loved it as much as I have!