Christmas Day 2019

Before the chaos ensued. 

Enjoying Santa's gifts.

The backpack she's been wanting for, oh, 2 years?

Jack is really into Toy Story right now and was so excited to get
a few more Toy Story friends to play with.

Luke got a few too.

I was excited to give Ben this custom plate for his truck.

He pulled off two big surprises for me:

But I had a big one up my sleeve for him.

Eliza and Luke each got a new set of modeling clay which provided for some fun Christmas Day play time.

Ben spent most of the day building Jack's new LEGO
set, with some help from Jack and Woody.

We took some time to talk to out-of-town
(or in this case, out-of-continent) family.

That evening all of the cousins on Ben's side came over for dinner and play time and
a little White Elephant gift game.  I took almost no pictures, but it was lots of fun - a
great way to end a fun and laid-back day!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was another great, laid-back kind of day.  We hung out around the house, reading, practicing piano, playing, and Eliza and Luke helped me add linings to their stockings (the outsides of which I made before Luke was born, so I guess it was time).

Then, Ben was itching to get out of the house and proposed that we drove to Sundance to pick up our season passes so we can learn to ski this year.  Exciting!  Then he and Eliza went to the shooting range while the other kids and I stayed home and watched It's a Wonderful Life while we made some more Christmas preparations.

Once everyone was home again, Ben helped get dinner cooking, then joined the kids working on some activity pages.  Our Bethlehem dinner was great, and more filling with the addition of tilapia, prepared in a Mediterranean style.

The last thing before bedtime was the sibling gift exchange,

which was great.  Jack was particularly excited about the oversized Toy Story 4

coloring pages Cat and Eliza gave him, and Eliza loved the calendar Cat gave her.

My view before going to bed that night.

Eliza was sleeping in the boys' room,
since I wouldn't let them sleep downstairs by the tree or stockings.

The Monday Before Christmas

Christmas Break got off to a great start, since I was able to sleep in until AFTER SEVEN thankyouverymuch.  I came downstairs to find the kids in pajamas, with morning jobs and breakfast partially completed, and I was so thankful for a day when we didn't have to hurry to go anywhere and we could just relax.  It was great.  We did a little coloring and hung out a bit before leaving for a doctor's appointment and an even-more-fun-than-usual trip to the library.

How did we never know that the Orem Library has a tarantula?

LEGO Hogwarts

The library's Festival of Trees tree got Cat's wheels turning.

A patron made this amazing gingerbread version of Elsa's Ice Castle,
with edible characters and everything.

"I'm going to Chicago."

That evening when Ben came home from work we all went to the mall to make our Giving Machine selections.  It was fun to talk about what the kids wanted to use their individual spending/Elf money to buy for people in need, and what we thought we should buy as a family.

As we walked through the mall afterward Jack found a calendar kiosk and
asked me, in all sincerity, "What are these?"

Then we drove to the Lights and Music House to watch a little bit of the
show there before going home for the night.

The Sunday Before Christmas

On the Sunday before Christmas, Cat and I participated in the ward choir (with Cat also helping to accompany on a particularly demanding Mack Wilberg arrangement), and Eliza, Cat and I sang a trio by Sally DeFord called "When the Son of God Was Born," which went pretty well.  A friend in the congregation sent us these pictures afterward.

I insisted on a family picture after church.
The kids were mostly cooperative, even though for some of them who had
changed out of their church clothes in record time, it meant getting back into church clothes.

We decorated gingerbread men/women and other shapes.

Cat was there too, but for some reason she escaped all of the pictures.

Then the girls and a friend of Cat's and I drove up to Kearns (between West Jordan and West Valley) to attend a big Christmas performance by some of Cat's school friends.  Most of it was in Vietnamese, but we enjoyed it anyway, the music and the culture and everything.

Light the World 2019

At the beginning of December we jumped on the Light the World bandwagon and amped up our efforts to be kind and do service.  It helped that Eliza's and Luke's teachers were making the same push at school: Ms. P told Luke's class that all month long they would be "Secret Kindness Elves," doing things like letting people get in front of them in line, picking up any trash that they see, etc; Ms. O told Eliza's class that they would be completing "12 Days of Kindness" as a class, with a new challenge revealed each day leading up to Christmas Break.  This was what it looked like when it was all unveiled:

As soon as I heard about this after school, I seized the opportunity to capitalize on Luke's and Eliza's teachers' initiatives and sent them to secretly deliver treats to our neighbor.

We continued to make an extra effort to be kind to each other and to others after that.  And we also talked about making a trip to the Giving Machine closer to Christmas, and helping others by making donations in that way.  I told the kids they could use their personal money, and that I'd also pay them Elf Bucks that they could use at the Giving Machine for any "Santa's Helper" jobs they did leading up to Christmas: wrapping gifts, addressing Christmas cards, decorating cookies, caroling, etc.  They were very helpful, and it made a big difference for me!