And Then It Was Christmas Time!

As soon as Thanksgiving was over we were officially in Holiday Mode!  Craig was out on the roof with the kids putting up lights, which led to this rather startling sight:

Why is there a small child outside my second-story window?

They LOVE being out on the roof with Daddy:

Nothing to see here, folks!

And then the next day, Saturday, our favorite tree farm was open for business and Kendra found this beauty:

As usually happens, it looked WAY bigger once it was all set up inside our living room!  A little shorter than last year's tree, but way fatter!  It was AWESOME.  Kendra dubbed it Phat Jo.  It was a very happy tree.

And then, later that afternoon, I got an early Christmas gift from Natalie:

Volume 8 in The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion!!!  I love this series so much.  If you haven't read them yet, you really need to!!!

I pretty much just stayed in bed reading the rest of the day, while Craig and the kids continued to decorate and watch Christmas movies while they did so.  (There was definitely more tv-watching than decorating, we learned!)

Also, Camille got together with a bunch of friends to make little squishy toys:

The following weekend was our ward Christmas party.  Amy Gaskin has been in charge of all the parties and she does an AMAZING job with all of them.  I've been so impressed!  For this party, she planned a little skit where people would re-create pictures that had to do with various past Christmases.  It was so cute and everyone did great!  There was also a Santa's Workshop with crafts for kids and they could visit Santa.

Here's Ryder (along with Sawyer and Daniel) being candy cane dancers (this was during the dress rehearsal)

(It was so nice to have a nice backdrop instead of the usual cinderblock walls and accordion curtains!)

Dressed up for "Mele Kalikimaka"

Samuel the Lamanite (with Colton and Gideon as two of the wicked Nephites!)

Colton is one of the shepherds and Ryder is the middle wise man!

So that was a huge success!  The following week was busy with some less-Christmasy, but still important to note, stuff:

Kendra (and Ella!) got to go to court where a judge officially handed over their driver's licenses to them!  (Thanks to Covid, Bentley got to skip this strange, Virginia step towards adulthood)

I found time to make a quick trip to the temple, partly to be at the temple (fastest initiatory session I've ever done!) and also to buy garments for Bentley before he went to the temple!

Craig, Kendra, Ryder, and Colton all helped out at the Toy Lift and had the best time doing it!  Camille can hardly wait until she's old enough to join them!  (The lady who runs it basically lets the kids eat candy the entire time they're helping out, so they really do love it!)

Here's Kendra hard at work

And Colton, too!

Colton and Craig occasionally wore matching clothes!  

And Ryder and Colton had their band concerts!

Ryder with his trombone

And there's Colton with his saxophone!

Kendra also had a band concert, but this one turned out to to be something of a bait-and-switch.  Basically, the middle and high school orchestras were playing, and then for a couple of the songs, they had the high school band join them.  So we were there for an hour and a half to see Kendra play two songs.  I was kind of irritated by this, even if Kendra's songs were excellent.  I should have brought a book!!!

But there's Kendra, right in the middle of the back row!

And Craig and I went to a white elephant gift exchange all the way up in Elkton!  It was a bit of a drive, but I do love this awesome pillow I got out of it:

😂

And finally, here's this cute picture of Kendra and Camille in front of the Christmas tree:

I like that they're kind of matchy, without being too matchy, you know?

And that was just the first part of the month!