Christmas Festivities

I hosted a few fun little Christmas parties this month.  First, a Christmas breakfast for my primary presidency.  I sure appreciate all the work they do... and plus, they are just awesome friends of mine and I wanted to thank them.

We hosted our traditional gingerbread cookie decorating party.  This is always one of my favorite things to do in December.  I never invite a ton of kids, because then I'm too stressed to enjoy my own children!!  We keep it simple!

Our annual BYU Southern Cali Throng Christmas party was sooooo much fun! I had a pasta bar and yummy chocolate cake with peppermint ice cream.  Missed the Mulliners, but always such a wonderful time seeing our old friends.  We were freshmen at BYU in 1996!!  Seriously! I'm so old.

Loved spending the evening with the Douds and Joffs for a yummy dinner and cookie decorating.  Special bonus:  we discovered that adding a good dose of egg nog to hot cocoa tastes amazing.

Ward Christmas party was a success.... heck, Evie's not too old to sit on Santa's lap yet!

Loved going to the Nutcracker with Evelyn.... it's been our tradition for the past 3 years.  Grandma came down to help with Anna and Grant so we could attend. Such a fun show! And so fun to go with Marilyn and Erika and the Douds.

Lots of Christmas baking this month!  Of course our favorite was Grammy's Christmas sugar cookies!  We also made a delicious Christmas trail mix and some cute little chocolate donut reindeer! The boys enjoyed picking out their favorite chocolates at Sees candy thanks to their gift card from Grammy and Papa!

We enjoyed putting together many gifts for friends, family and teachers!  So proud of Evelyn for tying blankets for her siblings and her teacher!  That was HOURS of work- but everyone loved their blankets so very much.  Mom was busy putting together  thank you for primary teachers (thank you for the idea Grandma!) and teacher gifts (gold nail polish, chocolates!) The kids worked on blessing bags to hand out to the homeless... we actually have a lot of homeless people on the street corners so this is a worthwhile service project that the kids love working on.