Oh-Bla-Di

Merry Christmas!

We got to enjoy another wonderful Christmas Eve with the Hoffmans, as is tradition around here.  We got all dressed up, set a fancy table and enjoyed a fabulous dinner of steak, twice-baked potatoes, and green bean casserole.

Lighting the Christmas Eve carousel.

Sweet kiddo snuggles.

Making sure we get lots of pictures of the ornaments.

It’s tradition! Caspers Kids and Hoffman Kids (2010, 2009).

Reading “Twas the Night Before Christmas” and then they all went to sleep!  Ready for a happy Christmas tomorrow morning!

So glad we’ve had such a fun Christmas Eve tradition here in Vegas.  Thanks for a great night, Hoffman family, and a great four years!

Just to preserve for posterity all the fun we’ve had this month getting ready for Christmas, I thought I ought to do a little round-up.

:: We rode a train.

:: We went to a kids’ party.

:: We went to a work party.  Yummy food, but no picture!

:: We did some artwork.

That’s her new “camera” face.  Oy.

:: We got busy “elving” for Christmas gifts.

Not finished yet, but those two Habitat Restore drawers are really going to be something special for Whoozers.

There has to be a little something homemade for everyone!  What’s better for a toddler than a soft bucket?

:: We baked lots and lots of cookies!

:: And we got to see a winter wonderland (desert style!).

With all this busyness, I think we just might be ready for the big day.  Looking forward to yummy dinner tonight and a magical morning.  Happy (almost) Christmas!

We love our kids’ school for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that they throw big holiday parties and invite all the families in.  I remember that it was always so fun to be in my school “off duty” when I was a kid and so I’m glad our kids get that chance here too.

The Friday of Winter Festival is also a school-wide pajama day, so the kids went to school in jammies and parents are invited to wear jammies for the festival.

These two were so cute, it just made my heart ache that day!

At our school, each of the classrooms is open with a fun activity or project for the kids to do and there are decorations and snacks throughout the hallways.  But the main event is that each of the classes in the school practices a song or poem for weeks in advance and then does a little performance for the families at Winter Festival.

I’m so grateful for this school because they’re so fun!  I can’t imagine opening a whole classroom, filling it with sparkle paper and glitter and then inviting kids in to go nuts.  Can you imagine the mess?  But, no kidding, on Monday morning, you’d have never even known it happened.  Talk about extra effort for the good of the kiddos.

Making glitter snow angels.

Noah wasn’t so sure glitter snow angels were awesome.

The babies and toddlers videotape their performances and we get to watch the movie on the big night since there’s no way they’ll perform for a big group on demand.  But, the bigger kids all do a little show and it’s super cute.

Ava’s class performed the poem “Falling Snow” and then sang “Jingle Bells.”  We got an advance preview of her performance at home before we left for the party.

Ava was pretending to be shy when it was her group’s turn to perform and we’re not really sure why.  We know she knew her stuff and she’s quite the ham, so that will probably always be a mystery.  Regardless, we sure had a fun time and all those cute performances sure made up for the sugar crash the next day!

We took a build up approach to our Christmas decorating this year and finally finished the tree on Sunday after meeting Santa Claus. We started with just the shelf-top decorations after Thanksgiving, then put up the tree with lights and THEN did the ornaments.  This process meant that we didn’t have to have five hours dedicated to hauling stuff out of the closet and putting it out and we did a whole lot less yelling (that’s always a good thing).

So, I don’t have any “in process” shots of the early decorating stages, just the ornament finale.  That’s the good part anyway, right?

Noah trying to sneak into the black hole that is the closet under the stairs.

Matt making sure the lights are just right.

Matt always does the star.  It’s tradition.

Digging around for just the right ornament.  Is there anything cuter than two kiddos in matching footie jammies?

Just the right ornament in just the right spot.  Ava’s noticing that her name is on this one!

Oh, the temptations of Christmas ornaments.  Noah had no interest in the tree until we hung all this shiny stuff on it.

Noah helping Daddy reach the higher branches. And Daddy helping Noah not to break all the ornaments.

All that decorating is exhausting!

Somehow I didn’t get a shot of the finished tree, but it sure is pretty.  We all spent an evening laying underneath it to stare at the lights and sparkles and found that it was indeed magical.  Isn’t it amazing what light and sparkle and love can do for a plain old tree?