December

We have had a wonderful Christmas season, so incredibly busy but 

full of tradition, family, service, and cheer! 

I hosted my first Christmas Piano recital, which was incredibly rewarding.

Paige performed Jolly Old St. Nicholas

Leah performed Mary Had a Little Lamb on the white keys!

All of my students. I felt proud.

I purchased this adorable stocking advent from one of Leah's many school fundraisers. I filled it with little activities for every night until Christmas...we had a blast. 

I actually ended up making one for my sister for Christmas because I loved ours so much.

Every day/evening we had three advents: activity, a candy advent, and then we unwrap a Christmas book every night as well. We have been doing the book advent for a couple years now and I think it's my favorite.

We kicked off December 1st with hot chocolate, sprinkles, marshmallows and cookies. These girls love using this little tea set I picked up, they act like royalty.

We did a couple crafts, one of which was a home made "snow globe"

Of course the girls loved it, and were even thoughtful enough to take one to our neighbor.

Skookie night!
We usually do this after kids are in bed so after five years, this was the first time they had tried it.

Christmas tree pizza night. Thomas and James got to join us for this one.
How good does it make you feel when your daughter says, "Mom you are the best at making pizza."

Christmas movie, popcorn, and stringing popcorn garland. We hung it on the tree and it was hilarious to watch Syd help herself to popcorn when she got hungry.

This is our second year doing '20 Random acts of Service' on one of the Saturdays. It is a great way to get the girls to notice others in need.

We offered to help this man and instead he gave us one of his garlands for sale to gift to someone else. 

My mom called me one night and sadly announced that she had just attended her last childs' Christmas concert. Ironically we had just attended our first. 

I was happy that our school still allows Christmas concerts and songs. Some of these kids were hilarious to watch! And this was the night Doug and I realized that appreciation of the arts and culture is a thing that some people just were never taught. There were people taking pictures and video of their children while leaning on the stage, one woman was seriously in front of the choir teacher. Doug said, "okay, this is starting to get crazy. I feel so strange right now." Awkward!

I attended my first work party with Doug. I felt so silly because there just aren't a lot of stay-at-home-moms. It was fun though and nice to meet a lot of the people Doug works with. 

And we just had to get a picture of the pig.