A few days before Christmas we headed out to deliver goodies to a few friends.
Cat was more excited about this than Jack.
I made a batch of salt dough ornaments to paint with Jack's preschool group at the beginning of the month. The batch happened to be so big, though, that I had enough ornaments to host TWO MORE salt dough ornament painting playdates, one with younger friends and one with older friends. Gotta love it!
Two days before Christmas we decided to take the kids to the dollar store so that they could choose presents for family members. Cat was the most excited about this (and was eager to wrap any of the presents we would let her wrap), and it took some convincing for me to jump on board, but in the end it was a fun thing to do. We might have to re-think our method next year, though, because 90% of what the children chose was a complete waste of money. (See below.)
On Christmas Eve some friends invited us over for dinner, so we had fun hanging out there and all of the kids acted out Christmas story as Ben read Luke 2. When we got home the kids put on pajamas and gave out their dollar store gifts. Note: In the pictures below, the kids are wearing their coats because we were about to go outside to spread the reindeer food. Don't worry, the heat works just fine in the house!
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| Cat was SO excited about her present to Daddy. |
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| Just what he always wanted - a criminal profiling kit! Cat just thought it was a drawing kit, and had lots of fun practicing faces. |
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| Jack has been pretty obsessed with monster trucks lately, so he loved this little truck Cat gave him. It was broken before he went to bed that night. |
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| Cat LOVED the cheerleading stuff Jack gave her. The megaphone lasted for about 2 days before it busted, and the pompoms were shedding everywhere for about 3 days before we finally threw them away. |
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| Spreading out the reindeer food Jack made with his preschool group. |
Then they went to bed, and waited for Santa...
and Mom and Dad got to work!
Hey Brett...saw your comment on our blog about the Night Before Christmas game. We started playing when we were kids and have passed on the tradition as adults to our kids. Everybody has to buy something for $1, so it usually ends up being a treat of some sort and wraps it. Then on Christmas Eve we all sit in a circle with the gift we bought and somebody reads The Night Before Christmas book. Everytime the word AND is said you pass the gift to the left and THE you pass it to the right. We had missionaries come over one year and they added every time Santa is referenced you toss your gift in the middle and it's a free for all and then continue with the story with what you ended up with. At the end of the story you end up with the present left it your hands. It is soooo fun with kids and EVERYBODY laughs through the whole thing. We played it one year at our Seminary Christmas party gift exchange..the bigger the group the more fun it is!
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