It seems that all the late nights we’ve spent out at Christmas activities in the freezing weather (i.e. 50 degrees) have about done us in, I think, and the girls and I have been chilling together on the couch this week with stuffy noses. Jake has been the sole survivor!
A few Christmas activities we did last week:
We met up with the Wrights to see a live nativity in Ladera. Animals and hot chocolate… need I say more?
The true Christmas miracle was that none of our four toddlers burned themselves or lit anything on fire during Silent Night.
Behold the power of fire.
A photographer there asked to take a bunch of pictures of the girls. This one ended up in the local section of the OC Register! Not sure why they chose to only include Amelia instead of both of the girls, but Amelia was sure excited!
Our December nightly outings continued with going to the Santa’s Village at the community center. Samantha and Amelia’s two all-time favorite Christmas songs are Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph, and lo and behold, who was there to greet them?
Starstruck!
Speaking of celebrities, it was a special treat to see Parker there, who has been working overtime being the best new big brother ever to Baby Maple! Samantha and Amelia had an in depth chat with him to find out how the baby thing was going and what they should expect in a few months.
Doing their best gingerbread impressions.
Gorging on candy canes at last year’s Santa’s Village, 2014: 
Since we had already met Santa this year at the twins club event where we didn’t have to wait in line, we opted to just wave to Santa as we walked around instead of waiting.
Last year’s Santa photo will suffice.
The girls were content just looking at all the fun decorations.
Cookie decorating never hurts either.
Try some, sis!
While keeping vigilant for Frosty and Rudolph sightings, we watched some of the classic old Chipmunk Christmas movie while sipping hot chocolate.
Zombie Amelia selfie. Not sure where the other child is…
Over the weekend, we met up with Amy, Keriann, Crystal and Sheela’s families to see the Follow the Star nativity show and creche exhibit put on by one of the local stakes. We barely made it through the show (fortunately only 20 minutes) before the girls started melting down, presumably from the unusually chilly evening and the fact that they ran out of hot chocolate.
Fun fact: all three of Crystal’s girls have played the baby Jesus in this show in years past!
It was a lifesaver having Lily there to keep the girls entertained during the show.
The girls bundled up. Chelsea, London, Kennedy, Jadyn, Addison, Samantha and Camdyn.
During the day, the girls have kept busy singing Christmas carols at music class, doing somersaults choreographed to Christmas music at MyGym and making Christmas crafts at art class. My favorite so far has been the Naughty/Nice monitor we made in class. It has a little arrow we can move to either the Naughty or the Nice side of a paper plate– theoretically great for instant feedback. The only problem is, the girls think it’s hilarious anytime they do something that warrants the arrow turning to the Naughty Side and have started trying to get their arrow there on purpose.
Showing off our reindeer hats.
It’s a good thing we’ve had a lot of fun activities going on to bring in a little Christmas cheer after everything seemed to hit the fan all in one week! Bandit tore his ACL and has had to be on modified “doggie bedrest” which he has not been too excited about. I can’t feel too bad for him since the girls have been such good caretakers and he’s been completely pampered.
On top of dealing with the joys of dog ownership, we of course had to have a slab leak two weeks before Christmas in which five gaping holes had to be torn out of our downstairs walls by the plumbers trying to find the leak.. the same walls we just painted and had new baseboards put in three weeks ago (obviously HAD to be these ones). No major damage to the house (unfortunately…would have loved to have an excuse to replace our floor downstairs), although my heart goes out to our neighbors who had a slab leak at the same time and whose kitchen was basically totaled in the process. It all gets crazy at Christmastime!
Good thing the girls don’t seem to mind all the chaos. We showed them our mistletoe and they are really great about remembering to give lots of hugs and kisses!
Spreading the Christmas cheer!
Lots of love,
