Kids' Christmas Party!

Santa Strawberries

Elf Chicken Salad bagels

melted snowman cookies

veggie tree

posing in front of the tree

Isabelle, Sophia, Lauren, Abby, Kate, and Aubrey getting ready for lunch

Ashlynn, Isaac, Alex, Andres, and Cari hangin' in the kitchen

Sophia and Isabelle sporting their hats!

Alex was the first one with a finished product!

We're not sure if Kaylee did more eating or decorating

candy chaos!

Not sure if moms or kids are doing more work!

Leo and his house

Luca hard at work

Isaac doing a little sampling

Ashlynn showing off her book

time to open presents!

Hilary and Kate

Jill and Lauren reading her book

Stephanie and Abby get to reading right away!

Trevor checks out his book too

Here are the kids' finished houses
(with my awesome homemade candle holders!)

Bagel snowmen for lunch

Jill, Jodie, Adeline, and Sandra hanging out and getting some grub!

I mixed it up for our annual kids' Christmas Party this year.  As usual I offered lunch (some of the pictures got out of order??) with some festive fare but instead of doing craft stations I decided to do gingerbread houses.  Hmmm.  Well I guess it was okay.  I think it was kind of hard to do lunch and house decorating b/c there just seemed to be so much stuff everywhere.  Plus, I didn't really feel like I could set up all the candy, frosting, etc. before they had eaten lunch, so it posed a problem of feeling organized when it was time to get it out.  I also feel like I should have pre-assembled the houses, but quite honestly, I just didn't have it in me.  I hope everyone had fun and it was great that all the moms jumped in to help out with assembling, passing out candy, decorating, cleaning up, etc.  I may do it again next year, but I'll have to do some tweaking I think.  My kids were happy to eat their houses and didn't care too much that they weren't extremely embellished.  At the end of the afternoon we did our annual holiday book trade and it was so wonderful to see them all so excited about books.  Many kids sat right down to read or be read to...it makes a mommy's heart warm! :)

Polar Express

Sarah and Sophia settling in 

Leo and the Little Bears catch up before the show

I've got popcorn, I'm good.

Isaac telling his mom all kinds of cool stuff

So the kids have this super awesome dentist that always does really fun stuff for his patients.  Every winter they do a Polar Express event where they rent out a theatre and show the movie on the big screen.  As long as you donate a new toy to their office you (and whoever you want to bring with you) get a free ticket to the show.  Each kid gets a bag of popcorn and a drink.  Naturally I took advantage of this and brought along some friends! ;)  We used a whole row of seats and then some!  

The kids did okay, but at least it was a theatre full of kids, so the talking, shouting, and question asking was to be expected.  Sophia was a little scared, but that is par for the course for her.  Since the kids in the movies wear their pajamas the rest of the kids were encouraged to wear theirs as well.  I thought they all looked pretty cute, even Charlie and I sported some festive jammies too!

Nativity Play

Sophia and her class put on the Nativity play again this year and for the second year in a row, Sophia reprised her role of the Arch Angel Gabriel.  She was happy to be Gabriel, but was really hoping for Mary this year.  I'm pretty sure she was the angel again because it's the biggest speaking role and we all know she has no problem in that area! ;)  Afterwards they performed some songs in the "Angel Band". Sophia did a great job, knew every word to every song and got LOTS of compliments from other parents.  She was adorable and had one of the biggest audiences too with me, Leo, Sue, my mom, and Stacy.

A Little Holiday Culture

A little dark, but a cute shot nonetheless

I took the kids to see Junie B. Jones Jingle Bells Batman Smells at Union Station last week.  They have a small theatre that puts on all the Theatre for Young America shows.  This is Sophia's second play and Leo's first.  Both of them liked the show and are eager to go back and see more, especially after looking at the posters outside!  After the show, we took them upstairs to ride on the holiday train.  We looked at all the fun miniature train sets and they even got to build some tracks of their own.

Time to Decorate!

Let's help each other

I put it right there, Mom

This picture just cracks me up.  Sophia is sort of exasperated with Leo, can you tell?!

We had our tree up for about a week before we could manage to decorate it.  At least Charlie put the lights on it so I could turn it on and feel festive, but the kids were beside themselves that there were no ornaments...gasp!  They did a great job hanging them, even though they still have a little trouble getting them on there by themselves.  They had a great time picking out their favorites and remembering the ones they had made in years past.  They have even made or gotten a few more since we decorated and they were so excited to be able to add them to the mix.