Leading up to Christmas

In addition to see The Piano Guys and Voice Male in Utah that weekend prior to Christmas, we filled our time with Gardner Village, The Blue Lemon (my favorite restaurant), and Temple square.

When we lived in West Jordan, I took the boys to Gardner Village a few times a year to feed the ducks, and see the witches at Halloween and the elves at Christmas that decorate the grounds.  I think they're darling.  My kids think they all look creepy.  

They have these elves set up all over in funny little scenes.  They actually have an I Spy map for kids to see if they can find them all.  The boys didn't want to be bothered with that, so we just kept our eyes open.

 Portions of Santa's naughty and nice lists were out in the open for the kids to see if they could find their names. A few of mine actually found their names on the list!

Can Carter really be shocked by this??

No one is surprised to see Braxton's name on the nice list.

This really was a surprise.  Emma was worried for the entire time.  We receive videos from PNP (Portable North Pole) that lets the kids know if they are on the naughty or nice lists.  Santa was undecided on Emma even on Christmas Eve.  After bringing them into our room Christmas morning, Emma couldn't wait to hear if she had anything waiting for her by her stocking. 

The girls loved petting the ponies, but were done hanging around after he pooped on the floor.

 We were a little chilly and went to the Bakery to split a few donuts and eat some of our unique flavored taffies that we had bought at the candy store.

 The line to go up and see the Christus was so long (hour wait) that we went to the basement and viewed all the new exhibits down there.  It was terrific!

The weight of the snow and the severe cold had made it so that some of the lights weren't working around temple square; however, outside the square near the reflecting pool, it was all lit up and gorgeous!

 This little Elf of ours, Ellie, was busy, busy during the Christmas season.  She had lots of fun, 

made lots of new friends,

and got my girls out of bed everyday.  As soon as I'd go in to wake up the girls, they would jump out of bed to find Ellie and see what she had been up to.

Once, she tried to teach Carter a lesson about the importance of taking care of your clean clothes after you mom has so nicely washed and folded them for you.

We were Christmas ninjas this year as we did the "12 Days of Christmas" to a family in our neighborhood (not easy when you go out of town!)

Christmas Eve morning, the girls went out in their jammies and tried to sled down the hill in the backyard.

 That night, we warned everyone that we had sickness in our home (flu), but our family still decided to come.  The missionaries and some friends opted out. 

We could have fed an army.

 After some friendly rounds of Christmas Trivia and Christmas Bingo, we were ready for the Nativity.

Emma continues to take on the role of Mary very seriously…

 The boys don't.

Carter wanted to be Samuel the Lamanite this year.  We are used to having our balcony on our 2nd story to have him preach from, but this year he got to stand on a stool.  I also totally forgot to buy large marshmallows to throw (as stones), so we used taffy instead.  They were a little tougher and with the shorter range and new boys who thought it was funny to throw them hard at our "Samuel" who was also still recovering from a bout of the flu, it was a different experience.  The comedic relief was Grandpa Bird was bothered by the wasteful use of the taffy and when he saw a bunch on the floor, ran to pick them up and stuff them in his pockets.  :)  Too cute!

After the fun and singing of our favorite songs, everyone went home.

 The girls were anxious to open up the present that Ellie, our elf, had wrapped for them the night before--and made a mess of the tape while she was at it, I might add.

 Our Christmas Eve gifts to open were new jammies. 

To get us all to match, the girls' pj pants required a bit of modification sewing by me (from women's XS), but looked cute on them.

My boys are all in mens' sizes--so no sewing required!  Crazy!  How does this happen?

Steve, Evan, and Carter (our sickies) crashed. I was up a bit later (wink! wink!) to help prepare everything and finish wrapping.  It was a good night, though.  Good enough to invite a special visitor.  And yes, Emma made the "nice" list--in case you were wondering.