Christmas Activities

I am a little bit sad to admit that we didn't do a ton of christmas activities this year. We did do our usualy dancing at night and watching some fun Christmas shows, but this year has been a little but hard on me. I sometimes feel like I am barely making it through each day and so trying to go above and beyond and do extra stuff gets pretty hard for me. I am really hoping by this year next time I won't feel quite so overwhelmed and I can start to think about doing more things. One really amazing thing that we did was we went to a live nativity that was at the temple grounds. I was seriously blown away. The music was amazing and so we're all the costumes, but more than anything I felt the spirit so strong. I hope that it had a little impact on the kids as well.

It actually was a real baby and it made it even more special I think.

The lighting was really bad to take a picture, but we ended up with one sort of. It is definitely something that I plan on doing with the kids every year. It was even better becuase we just happened to bring a stroller and becuase we did we got to go to the front of the line. Score one for us!

Jane did a little Christmas program too, and it was so fun to get to go and see her perform. She does such a great job. She just loves her best friend Maxim so much!

I got to take Annie on her first Christmas date this year. I may have explained in the past, but every Christmas we take the kids on a date where they pick out a present for the sibling that they have that year and then they get a treat. I really think it may be my kids favorite Christmas tradition. It was fun to have Annie be old enough to take this year. I tried to take her to the mall, but we circled the parking lot for 20 mintues to no avail. It was crazy! Finally from the backseat Annie yells "mom lets just go to target!!!" And she really did yell, that girl has a bit of a yelling problem, she's a feisty one. So we went to Target and she picked a present for Russy and got herself an icee. It was a perfect little date.
We did our annual trip with a ward group where we go walk around a neighborhood in Rocklin and look at the lights and then meet up and havetreats. It was so warm the night we went that we barely needed jackets. It was pretty awesome. I loved this picture of the kids with the inside out group. Nellie totally fits with sadness.

All in all we had a great Christmas season and had a good time doing fun activities together as a family.