December Doings

Oh yes, we've done a lot, as usual.  Today turned out to be a nice day - snowed in at home.  We were supposed to go skiing, but the roads out of Albuquerque were all closed.  (daddy may have been more sad about that than mommy... but he did cook up a gourmet lunch for us, so he must not be too mad.)

Here's what we've been up to this Christmas season:

getting snowed on:

 visiting Santa at the Galloping Grace Christmas Corral (ie- Christmas village and tree lot)

buying the biggest tree (literally) that they had at the GGYR tree lot:

getting that tree to stand up and then decorating it:

getting snowed on some more:

making gingerbread houses at school:

 making gingerbread houses at home:

enjoying the GGYR Christmas village that we helped to paint:

 (The Elves' house)

 (Santa's post office - the girls painted the railings themselves!)

 (the school house - this thing is so cool, it's JUST like an old fashioned school house inside.  The girls would have played in there all day if I had let them.)

going to the girls' holiday parties at school.  Both classes did a fun book exchange and party with treats and movies:

(Grace, with her boy friends, as usual)

 going to the Nutcracker on my 36th birthday with my gorgeous girls:

 and meeting up with a few girl friends from the neighborhood:

opening some fun early Christmas presents from Aunt Em while we skyped with my family's Christmas party in Salt Lake:  (caw, caw)

and counting down!  According to our advent calendars (the one Grandma stitched for us, the chocolate-a-day ones, the little cards with windows from the school librarian, the paper chain Harriet made at school - pulling one link off each day, and the candle from our neighbor that we burn down to the next dot each night while we read scriptures about Christ), Christmas Eve is TOMORROW.  We are SO excited at our house.  Grace and Harriet are full believers and trust in Santa to make our days very merry and bright!  Nearly time to turn on that Santa Tracker!