Christmas Party!!!

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This week Jenn was in charge of putting together the ward Christmas Party! She decided to go with the Grinch as a theme. We had a giant Whobilation Celebration complete with a reenactment of the Grinch as a theatrical play and a breakfast feast. Ellie was one of the narrators for the play and she loved not having to memorize her lines. The activity was a huge success...probably due to the many late nights at the church setting it up.

Ellie got to get all fancy...Whoville style! Sadie informed me she was showing off her Grinch face.

Pretty amazing Grinch right?

Here is Ellie rocking the selfie booth!

Sadie got a chocolate coin from Santa's Workshop, and decided to eat half and smash the other half all over her lips!

Also, in the news Caleb is starting to make all sorts of noise. A couple days ago I walked in on him, and he was caring on quite the conversation with the light!

Ellie's B-Day Surprise...

This week was great, but the ending was the best. Ellie's birthday was at the end of the week, and guess what happened.....It snowed on her birthday! Our family loves snow, and we got like 5 inches of great beautiful whiteness. We played outside, shoveled the walks, and had snowball fights. The kids love to have Mark try to hit them with snowballs while they run and dodge as best they can.

For Ellie's b-day we had friends over to build gingerbread houses. Her good friend had never built a gingerbread house so we invited her whole family over and built all kinds of different things. A train, pirate ship, ski slope, cottage, Christmas tree house, and surfer's paradise. Then we had another one of Ellie's good friends over for dinner and had Hawaiian hay stacks. Life is great as a 9 year old!

The next day we had a beautiful nature walk. It was truly a winter wonderland. The girls and Mark loved throwing giant snowballs into the river, and Caleb had his first taste of white gold. He didn't think it was too bad, but he didn't go back for seconds. We just did our best to keep him bundled up!

13 days till Christmas or...17771 minutes or...1066243 seconds...but who's counting!

Christmas Is Coming!

This week was full of fun. We are also gearing up for Christmas. Our tree is up and the stockings are hung on the stairs with care. Here are three vignettes of the week (pretty big word right?)

First we were able to attend the local university's basketball game. Ellie and Caleb were the two that were most inthralled. Caleb starred at the court for quite awhile, and Ellie was determined to stay and see the ending even though it was like 9pm on a school night. It was a close game and our team won by just a couple of points! The other two girls had fun running in circles around the arena and giving the mascot high fives!

Then this weekend Ellie sang in her elementary school choir at the local Christmas festival. She did a great job, and loves....LOVES....to sing. We also got to run through a bounce house and take a ride on a trailer pulled by a tractor around the huge fields of the area. Ellie is the person in the center of the movie.





But, my favorite time at the Christmas festival was getting free cotton candy from the booth serving the stuff. The machine making the cotton candy was in the back corner of the booth and the girls and I would stand about 10 feet back from the machine and watch little wisps of cotton candy float out. They would run and grab the floating candy, and race back to get some more. It was great to watch!

Merry Christmas!