I can't believe this is my 3rd post about the holiday season, and I still have several more to post! I am really glad that at the beginning of November, I carefully planned out every day of our holidays so that we could be sure to do everything we wanted to before going to Sacramento. It's fun looking back and seeing that we were able to do almost everything I had planned and still have plenty of time to relax and not get overwhelmed. (It helped that I got most of my Christmas shopping done before Halloween and all of it done before Thanksgiving!) This post is of our fun activities from Dec 8-15.
A special delivery came from GramZ and GrampZ one day. It was an electric train to put around the Christmas tree! Jeremy was the most excited about it and loved reminiscing with the boys about the Christmas trains at his house when he was a kid. He was really giddy setting it up. All three boys played with it for the rest of the evening.
I like this shot of the train zooming around the track and the picture of Christ in the background.
Our tree got prettier and prettier as the days went by, because Tanner and Dallin brought home ornaments from school every day for advent (they attend a Catholic preschool).
Our church Christmas party was fun, and Dallin said hello to the visitors. (Tanner wasn't interested in Santa this time). I think it's hilarious how DJ ended up with a halloween shirt!
On Saturday Dec 10, I took Tanner on a special outing to see the Nutcracker!!
The weeks leading up to it, I told Tanner about the story, and we did lots of activities listening to the music from the ballet. We watched different nutcracker dances and stories on youtube. Finally, the big date came! We drove to a theatre in Rochester and Tanner LOVED it! He not only stayed awake the whole time, he bounced and conducted to the beat, smiled with excitement when he recognized his favorite songs and whispered to me about all the costumes and sets. At the end of each act, he got a little bored, so I held him in my lap and made his arms dance to the music, which he loved.
During intermission, we got popcorn and a rice Krispie treat. What a cutie with his snow hat hair!
We were a little disappointed that there was not a live orchestra accompanying all the dancing. But we did get to see some of the dancers up close after the show. Tanner was afraid to say hi to the dancers, but I got this pic from a distance. It was really fun to take my kid to the Nutcracker because it was something my mom did for me and my sisters every Christmas season. I hope to do it again next year, and maybe Dallin can come, too!
We babysat for Angie on Sunday, which means that we had 4 boys on our pew at church instead of 2. It was really fun, especially when this happened.
After church, all 4 boys went out to play in the new fallen snow! They had a great time!!
We had a couple friends over for Wassail and singing that evening.
The boys worked hard to wrap presents for their teachers and family. I helped as little as possible, and even though they used 3 times the amount of wrapping paper that I would have used, they did a pretty dang good job!
We enjoyed Tanner's preschool Christmas Concert!
I'm really proud of Tanner because he had a lot of anxiety with performing in the program. We talked through it, prayed, talked with his teacher, and he worked hard during his rehearsals. When the big night came, he was super excited and had no issues going up to sing, and he did a great job!
The lighting made it really hard to take pictures or video, but Tanner knew every song and sang really well! He was a little squished from the other kids on his row, though.
There was a great variety of songs, all centered on Christ. And they did a number with hand bells, reading the cards that the teacher held up to know when to play!
Our Christmas cactus bloomed just in time for us to enjoy it!
The boys got really excited about ninja turtles in December because of a show they found on netflix. They had fun playing with all the empty wrapping paper tubes.
We had some nasty windchills and sub zero temperatures for a few days, which meant no playing outside. So we built this snowman out of cardboard and craft supplies, lol. We also hoped to go on the Jolly Trolley ride in Rochester to see Christmas lights, but it ended up too cold for us, especially since Jeremy was sick. So we'll have to try that next year.
Tanner played hair shop one day on me without prompting. He did some pretty fun things to my hair!
We made it to the Spam Museum one day after school.
The boys made this conglomeration of a feast for me, haha.
Right before it was time to celebrate our Christmas in Minnesota, poor Jeremy came down with a nasty cold. It turned out to be a combination of strep, bronchitis and pneumonia. Jeremy saw an online doctor about it, so we aren't entirely sure what he really had. He got some kind of antibiotics to help him.
