My Favorite Time of Year

It doesn't get better than this, especially when this is my view from my spot on the couch. I spend a lot of time by this tree, now :)

We decorated this weekend so Bean could be part of it. It felt good to get the house picked up after a lot of chaos the past few weeks, and then we trashed it again with all the Christmas stuff, haha.

This view, too. 🥰

I love having all of my kids here. It's been louder, more tense at times, crazier, and more fun. 

Bean had to head back Sunday afternoon, but it's only 2.5 weeks until she's home for a month! 

Merry Christmas

Christmas Eve and all through the house, there were projects aplenty.

These kids spent a chunk of the afternoon building gingerbread houses.

Peanut requested that they try a theme this year, so here is presenting the 3 Little Pigs:

A house of straw, and house of sticks, and a house of bricks.

They turned out so cute!

Peanut was so happy with it all.

he even made furniture in his house.

And the rendition of the house of sticks included a Big Bad Wolf.

He's already made it to this house, haha.

It was a good way to wait for Santa, and all the fun that came with that.

 

Santa's Elves

Lots of busy people this week! Bean has had to work 3 mornings, but is now off for the rest of the break. Peanut had his normal Tuesday activities--Art class and park day, but is now done for the rest of the break. And everyone has had Christmas fun to work on--secrets and gift making, last minute errands, decorating, baking--we've been We've been checking things off one by one.

Cookie baking is always a favorite. 

We had to spread it across 2 days because we ran out of time to actually decorate the cookies, 

Bean has stepped up the game.

Bug went for the knitted look.

And Peanut has continued the tradition of kiddos everywhere--tons of sprinkles.

But in the end, we had plates and plates of treats to share.

I think the only crafty thing I'll get to this year was drying oranges to use on packages, 

and to turn into a garland for our mantle.

This little guy wasn't satisfied with the list of Christmasy things we already had planned. After watching The Man Who Invented Christmas on Dec. 22, he decided he had to write a Christmas book (with a quill and ink) and gave himself a Dec. 24th, 10 p.m. deadline because if Charles Dickens can do it, why can't he? Haha. We'll see how it ends, but he churned out the first chapter in a couple hours.

Peanut also wanted to make ravioli--which probably could have waited until next week, but honestly, keeping him busy this week is good (the Christmas crazy is strong with this one, haha.)

Luckily, he has an awesome uncle who used to do this for his job. (Especially lucky because I got boosted the day before and was dragging a little by late afternoon and wasn't up for doing this.)

They made pumpkin ravioli and spinach cannellini. 

Yum! So good.

We love having family around.

Feeling Christmasy

Christmas party season has kicked off! We had our ward brunch, which involved WAY too much food, storytelling, caroling, and Santa.

I wish I'd gotten there earlier and taken pictures of all the decorations because it was beautiful, but these were the table centerpieces.

Peanut was the only one to go visit Santa this year. We know every year might be the last.

We also finally got some decorating done. We pulled the decorations out last Sunday, hoping to at least get the tree up, but then we found out that half the lights were out on the tree and our decorating time was used up trying to troubleshoot.

And then our house stayed like this. All week. As we tried to do school at this table, and keep up with all the things. Because all the kids wanted to be around for the decorating, and we've got a couple who are almost never home. Don't love the mess, but am really glad that they are still interested in being a part of it.

So glad that this weekend we made some progress and the mess is starting to clear out.

We tried something new this year--time lapse videos are fun. May have to make more of these throughout the month to capture some of our traditions.

And we tried a new type of tree, too. We always clear off a couple shelves for our Christmas village and nativities, and now, we have a book tree! 

December Adventures

It's been a month of hiking (and catching a beautiful sunset at Del Valle).

Sometimes it's just the kids and I, but we love it when Daddy-o gets to come with us.

Peanut and I continued our Christmas Carol study with a chalk pastel of some symbols that represent the story. Peanut was very taken with this book and has loved all the different versions of the story.

We've taken a LOT of walks to see the lights around our neighborhood, and to get those 1000 hours outside.

I can't always convince anyone else to do a chalk pastel lesson, and this is one I wanted to do last winter and never got around to, so I sat down one evening with Nana from You Are an Artist and did this one on my own. I love little birds.

Our city put together a geocache style hunt that took us around the city, including a couple new spots that we hadn't visited before. It also has gotten us out for a really long walk one evening and a bike ride another.

Peanut and I made "snow" from baking soda and shaving cream and had fun playing with our artic animals.

We haven't baked quite as much as we usually do, and haven't done any marathon baking days, but I almost like this better. I made snickerdoodles one day. A few days later, Daddy-o and Peanut made Mexican wedding cookies, and then the kids had a gingerbread man baking zoom call with friends one day. It's meant that we've had a pretty steady stream of cookies all month.

Bean was with them most of the call, but then she had to go.

I love how the cookies turned out. We usually make buttercream frosting because I think it tastes better, but royal icing is the way to go for pretty cookies. 

There have been a lot of games played, many outdoors. Really, in order to get those outside hours, we've been taking everything we can outside. Peanut had fun learning how to play chess.

Peanut and I collected sticks to make these fun decorations.

Peanut and I had a surprise visit with the Grinch when we were dropping off a food donation.

The kids and I also had a fun winter picnic in the backyard--hot chocolate with all the fixings, cookies, a nutcracker picture book. 

We even made some fun shrinky dinks while we were out there.

An outdoor dinner on one of the warmish evenings. And notice the tent in the background--the boys slept outside for 3 nights in a row in order to make a dent in those hours they needed. They were the three warmest nights of the month, but it was still a little chilly.

We went hiking near Berkeley one Saturday, grabbed dinner at a Jewish deli, and then stopped by the Oakland Temple on the way home to see the lights.

If I had to pick, I'd say lights and outdoors are our theme for the month. We have been on every street in our neighborhood, as well as a couple other neighborhoods as well. We went to visit another spot one evening to do a decoration scavenger hunt (we had to go somewhere that none of us were familiar with, or the boys and I who had done the most neighborhood walks would have had an advantage.) We had so much fun running around for 45 minutes seeing what we could find. Daddy-o and Bean found a couple more items than the boys and I did, but they were a couple minutes late getting back to the car, so we're calling it a tie (and excited for a re-match next year!)

It's been a pretty fabulous month.