Cocoa Crawl
This was a first time event. Max's boss was a coordinator in making this First annual cocoa crawl in Old town Gresham. You purchase a Cocoa crawl mug and then on the day of the event you go to participating stores and they fill your mug. We decided to do it and the money for the mugs went to the local schools. We got a little bit of a late start and most of the stops were out of cocoa but we did get to visit some fun shops and the "crawl" ended in the city square where there was live music, more cocoa, visits with Santa and a tree lighting. This part was fun and the weather was not too cold, and Miles got to see the abominable snowman.
Black Friday Shopping.
Max likes going black friday shopping so we make our gift list on thanksgiving night. If there are good deals on black Friday he does that. So basically all our Christmas shopping for our kids is done in November thanks to Max's Black Friday shopping and Amazon...(gotta get our good deals on tape!!!)
Christmas Devotional
Every Year the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Broadcasts a Christmas Devotional where we get to hear a message from the Prophet and other leaders in the church. This year we watched it from our home, and it was a beautiful way to bring the Christmas Spirit into our home.
Christmas Luau
Here is a post about that!
Finding our Perfect Christmas tree
Here is the post about our Christmas tree hunt
Gingerbread cookies
Here is the post about our gingerbread adventures
Christmas Caroling
There was one night my friend and I made cookies and delivered them to some other women from church. I had made some extra cookies so Max decided to take the rest of the cookies to the neighbors and go caroling with all three boys while I was gone. I thought that was pretty brave of him. I wouldn't have ever attempted it...maybe because I'm not a huge fan of caroling. But they all had a blast.Major points for Max!
Progressive Dinner
One of our favorite traditions is our family progressive dinner. It has evolved (or devolved) in the last couple years since my mom doesn't drive a bus anymore so we don't always go from house to house. So this year we just went to my grandma's house and ate all day and played Jingo and did a Pinata and sang Christmas Carols
And I actually had my real camera with me so here are a couple photos of my Red Grandma playing the Christmas music. She is also the one who bribed me to keep going with piano lessons by keeping the chocolate chip cookie jar stocked and challenging me with a couple rounds of Dr Mario every time I went over for piano lessons. (No one can beat Grandma at Dr Mario)
Ornament Exchange/Minute to Win It
On the same day as the Progressive Dinner our friends host an ornament exchange/minute to win it party. Our boys always beg to go to their house so we were all pretty excited to stay up late for their party. I teamed with Miles and Max teamed with Charlie and we went around doing the minute to win it games.
Christmas Pajamas
We have given our children Christmas pajamas every year for Christmas (I know, not very original) but usually I get them sizes that they should be able to wear the following Christmas. Edwin grew out of his jammies by March so I decided to let my boys open their pajamas early this year so they could wear them on Christmas morning. They each got two sets of pajamas which has made laundry super annoying....(that's 4 pieces of clothing per child.) But they love matching so I'll take it while I can!
Grandpa Rob's house
We went to my dads house to decorate his tree and have a pizza and ice cream party, so that was fun.
Grandma Sharolee's house
One Sunday after church my mom invited us up to her house for dinner and for my boys to do a playmobil advent calendar with her. They also decorated a gingerbread house. And played with one of her new birds, Apparently "Crazy bird lady" runs in the family! Who knew?!
Preschool Performance and gingerbread house
Miles had a preschool Christmas performance and gingerbread making. This was canceled when Charlie went to that preschool because it was so snowy two years ago. Luckily Charlie was already off for Winter break so he got to come and participate. And there was even an extra house for him to decorate. We loved seeing Miles in all his cheesy glory!
Edwin downed the candy like it was his job.
Cocoa and Christmas Lights
One of our simple and also not original traditions is to fill our lidded mugs with cocoa and drive around the neighborhood looking at Christmas lights, sometimes this is a major win and other times there is fighting in the car (from the kids, not the adults, haha) This year was a win. The lights were magical for the boys and they loved having their own personal cocoa mug.
Christmas Eve was quite different this year. Every year for Christmas Eve we have gone to my Green Grandma's house. She is 93 years old and a couple weeks earlier she moved into a retirement home. We visited her and wished her a Merry Christmas and sang her some songs a couple weeks before Christmas but Christmas Eve we were home, which we were pretty excited about. We got to get in our pajamas early, get our house clean and ready for Santa. Enjoy a steak dinner. Then we watched Elf, which my kids had never seen. I think our Christmas Eve traditions will change over the years but we really did enjoy the calmness of staying in our own home.
Caramel Apples
For a gift to family members. Charlie helped me make homemade salted caramel and we gave a little package of the caramel with apples.
So there are a coupe of the fun ways we celebrated the season. Stay tuned for our Christmas morning!
No comments:
Post a Comment