Christmas

I'm a little slow! Now that the holidays are over, hopefully I can catch up.

We start celebrating the Christmas season with the first Advent (the fourth Sunday before Christmas Eve). Each of the four Sundays (Advent) before Christmas we do something fun as a family and light candles to count down toward Christmas Eve.

It's been a family tradition to spend the first Advent going to the Mesa, Arizona LDS Temple and see the Christmas lights. It's very fun (and a lot warmer than going to Temple Square in Utah) and one of Hanna's favorite parts of Christmas.

It's also a family tradition to forget our camera or run out of batteries when seeing the lights (we've tried to get a picture for several years). This year we did get a picture, but Jason was just testing to see if the camera worked and caught us off guard, so we all looked strange. Then the batteries died. But at least we have a picture at the lights! :)

For the second Advent we made gingerbread houses.

This was mine. The most famous because it was the only one made out of real gingerbread.

This is Jason's

Kamary's house.

This was Hanna's first attempt.

Hanna's second attempt is on the Left. Alyssa's is on the right.

All the houses together. Kohler was in trouble and didn't get to make one. :( Lauren just had a lot of fun eating the candy. :)


Brynlie had a lot of fun too.

The third Advent was a blur, and on the fourth Advent we had a great German dinner; gulasch, red cabbage, potato dumplings, and german noodles. We even had seltzer water and apple juice. We invited our bishop and his family over, since the bishop served a mission in Hamburg, Germany. It was fun to share our traditional meal with them and they brought the kids Kinder Eggs (they are chocolate eggs with toy prizes in the middle). It was a fun blast from the past (we used to get them all the time on my mission).

For Christmas Eve we had our traditional meal of Appetizers.

We watched a DVD about the Nativity Story and tracked Santa on the internet. Hanna was very excited. When we saw that Santa was in New York City, the kids were anxious to get to bed.

Opening Christmas Jammies.

Ready for bed!!

Kamary was excited to be Santa's helper again this year. Hanna was jealous that Kamary got such attention from Santa, but we reassured her that Santa was no respecter of persons and that one day she'll be able to help him too!

Christmas Morning

The Stockings

We got a lot of video of the kids opening presents but no pictures. Brynlie slept in and we saved her presents for her and got pictures of her opening them later.