December!!!

We had one of our best Decembers ever. I absolutely loved it. It must have been super duper amazing for me to say that because I have been battling an eye infection for several weeks (read: ugly glasses and no eye makeup) and have had a very minor case of shingles as well. And I'm pretty whiny when my eyes are acting up. Dan agrees that it was a wonderful Christmas, though he said just because it was great doesn't mean it was relaxing. I'm really bad at planning in time to relax.

We (read: Dan) have been working on making fake built-in bookshelves for the piano room. This involves using the Billy bookshelves from IKEA and putting trim around them to make them look built in. We aren't done yet, but it's starting to look really good!

Just bookshelves, before the trim was added:

One of the reasons it was the best Christmas ever is that Grandma Sandy surprised the kids! She flew in late Christmas Eve night, and she was there to greet the kids Christmas morning. We tried to be really sneaky sneak about this, but I can't tell you how many times I mentioned that she was coming right in front of the kids. Luckily they weren't paying attention. But it makes me curious about all of the things they don't hear that I think they should versus all of the things I don't want them to hear and they somehow do. It's a mystery, and I really lucked out this time.

Another thing that made Christmas so special this year was that the kids made each other tons of homemade presents. Actually they made too many, and it got pretty old watching them open their ninth homemade creation that no one could tell what it actually was, but it was really sweet that they took so much time to make things for each other. One of the reasons this came about was that we asked the kids if they would like to have their normal amount of presents this year or if they would rather have one big present--season passes to Hershey Park. They chose the park passes, but still wanted to have plenty of things to unwrap, hence the gifting of many homemade creations.

I, for one, was thrilled that they picked Hershey Park passes. I don't like stuff, I don't like toys, and so I felt like this was a major win for me. Easiest Christmas shopping ever.

They spent many nights in this tent that Grandma Kristi and Papa bought them. 

Our house felt especially Christmas-y this year. Here are our french doors, decked out in the cards we received.

This was right after we cleaned the whole house for the big Christmas Eve dinner party we threw.

Adult table and kids table:

And here is where I made the kids eat lunch outside on the deck so that they wouldn't mess up the house we had just cleaned:

We also threw a party for the neighborhood kids. We cut out, baked, and decorated sugar and gingerbread cookies. We also made ornaments.

And of course we did our annual Christmas caroling. We found this lighted arch by one of the families we sang to, so naturally this event had to occur.

We completed our annual family puzzle, and I even got a little involved even though I don't like puzzles at all.

The girls performed in their children's choir at a Christmas concert.

And at said concert, their artwork from the art class they have been taking was on display.

I cried through the whole concert. The kids were amazing. The high school a cappella choir was out of this world. The orchestra was excellent and performed my favorite Trans-Siberian numbers. They also had a special percussion group perform, and they were excellent. One of the high school percussionists composed and conducted a piece. Bawl city for me.

And I took some new members of the church to do baptisms for the dead at the Philadelphia temple. It was their first time, and it was a wonderful experience.

A fantastic December.

The End.