Pre-Christmas Traditions...

FINALLY...it was time to start getting into the Christmas traditions! :) This year we added a new one, which I am pretty sure we will start doing every year. For FHE one night we went on a Christmas light scavenger hunt. We loaded in the car in our jammies with Hot Chocolate and popcorn, and set out to find some great houses. I also made up a list of Christmas Lights 'I-Spy'. We all had so much fun searching and searching. Of course, we had looked up on line to find where the good lighted neighborhoods were in Spokane, and some we just know from being here for 10 years. We did find a new one; And boy was she a beauty! Behold...

My favorite is the 'Happy Birthday Jesus' sign! :)

Taylor was equally impressed:

After we had found all of our items, we headed to DQ for some blizzards. It was a last minute descsion, and one that was made before realizing we were all already in our pj's! :)

We even added some new items to the list for next year. Who knew that palm trees were such a popular Christmas decoration??? :)

There is a whole street just around the corner from us where every house in on the block is decked out! It is pretty fun, and we drove down that street at least once a night during the holiday season. That is every house, except one. The house on the very end had this very nicely lit sign out in front of it! :)

We went to the McLuskies house one day to make the Christmas treats for our friends and neighbors. This is the third year we have done this together, and I love our tradition. Katrina is one of my most favorite friends in the world. The last two years we have each come with ingredients to make 3-4 of our favorite treats, then we put all of the plates on the table and every plate gets a few of each thing we make. It is always (so much fun, but...) very time consuming, and very confusing coordinating the oven and temps etc... This year we opted to make it simple and easy. We did 8 huge batches of sweet chex mix and then just fulled up bags and bags to give away. It is always a fun day of girl talk and eating.

Here are two of our little helpers...

The finished product:

As I was filling out the tags to give away, I couldn't help but smile at how our Christmas treats were just a bit different than they have ever been before! :)

Another tradition, is making ginger bread houses. Our good friends, Alicia & Lucas invited us over to make them, and it was so much fun! We are so lucky to have such fun friends!

Taylor & Lucas:

The kids in action:

They each got to do a little graham cracker house, and then we put this real ginger bread house together all of us. It's a swiss ski lodge in the alps, if you must know!

Then, a picnic lunch with our friends:

Thanks Nelsons, for having us over!

Next up was our Branch Christmas 'Posada'. Members of the branch dressed up like Mary & Joseph and we followed them through the building, as they got denied room by room because there was no room for them. Until finally they were able to enter the 'Stable' and we were all allowed in and had a delicious dinner. 

After dinner, of course, was pinata time for the kids! It was so much fun! I love our little branch!

Tuckers turn to take a swing:

Finally it busted, and the kids went wild!!!

Tucker asked to wear this Santa hat every single day to school for the whole month of December. I told him he could wear it to his Holiday Party on the last day of school. He also got to wear his Christmas PJ's that day to school. To say that he was excited about this last day of school would be an understatement! :) Santa hat AND PJ's--it doesn't get better than that!

And lastly, but not leastly, our tradition of Christmas Sunday clothes. Thanks to Grandma Kelly for the cute clothes this year! :)

I just love these two:

It doesn't get much cuter than this:

And here's the best girl shot we got:

Me and both of these crazy kids of mine:

So cute with daddy:

Oh man, I love these guys!

We had so much fun getting into the Christmas spirit this year. All of these fun traditions, on top of our daily advent calendar activities that we do every day (I rotate between; a Christmas Craft, a Christmas movie, a Christmas treat, a Christmas book every day. And I think next year I am going to add a Christmas service to the rotation) and a fun Branch Primary activity where we got to go 'shopping' for our family members, it was FUN and BUSY getting ready for Christmas! But I can't complain, because I wouldn't have it any other way! I am so blessed!