Christmas 2011

We had a wonderful Christmas.  We have been having tons of fun all month long.

Anna and Nicholas have spent quite a bit of time being Mary and Joseph.

Anna has become quite the little cook.  Making Christmas treats was so much fun with my little helper.  I love that Anna can do so much to help.  We were able to make fudge, peanut butter fudge, popcorn balls, gingersnaps, sugar cookies, and we are going to make caramels tomorrow.

Anna and Nicholas both love music.  Christmas songs were sung all month long.  The kids love it when I would sing Christmas songs as they were brushing teeth.  

Anna learned two songs to sing with the Primary kids.  She even went up to sing with them on Christmas day in church.  Too bad we have no idea where she was standing, we would have loved to watch her.  She came back beaming, "I sang with the kids!"  Here is the at home performance.  

One of our favorite Christmas traditions is reading Christmas stories.  We had no problem getting 20 minutes of reading in each day.  Reading stories on your own, with dad, or with grandma we really just read all day during Christmas time.

I finally finished our Christmas stockings.  I don't know if I am 100% in love with these, but I like them WAY better than our old stockings.

Devin's parents did the 12 Days of Christmas for us again this year.  We love this!  We took turns opening one present each day.  We are so grateful for all the time they put into this fun tradition.  Several gifts this year were memory books from the Baldwin/Olsen families.  What treasures!  I didn't get pictures of the books, but I do have pictures of puzzle day and jam day.

Christmas Eve we went to my mom's house and did the Nativity.  Anna was the lovely Mary once again.

Nicholas was,  well...something between King Herod, a Wise Man, and the Angel with the Star. (Sorry for the red eye, he was having way too much fun running around, this was the most clear picture we could get, he wouldn't stay still.)

We were extremely grateful for 1 o'clock church Christmas day.  We had plenty of time to open presents, play with toys, eat, and even take a family picture before we went to church.

Anna was pretty excited to finally get her train and fairies.  She had a chance to sit on Santa's lap the week before and she was pretty ticked that when she asked him for a train and fairies that he didn't give it to her right then.  The waiting was worth it.  She can't get enough of them.  Nicholas loves the cars and his little push car.  Both kids love each other's toys.  They are learning to share pretty well.  Anna loves Nicholas's nap time because that means she gets to play with ALL the toys.

We had a great Christmas.  We hope that even with all the fun Christmas traditions that our kids can remember what Christmas is really about.  We loved reading the nativity story each day.  We have a advent calendar that tells part of the story each day.  Anna has the story pretty much memorized.  We tried really hard to focus on the nativity each day so they could remember what Christmas is really about.