This Christmas I had more requests to do pictures than any other time. So the first two weeks of December were nuts. One of the "pros" of this situation is that because everyone else was on the ball to get their pictures, it got me on the ball. Around Thanksgiving weekend I had about 4-5 family photo shoots, two of which were in my "studio". I decided to do our own family too while I had everything set up. Luckily, the girls are old enough now that I can do the self-timer thing. It worked out great. We even got a few pictures of us with the cat too - unfortunately, we did not look as good in those shots, so the cat picture was not a finalist for our Christmas cards. (o:
For one of my photo shoots, I was unable to find a location for my little "Loo" to play. Becky (the client whose family I was shooting) said to just bring her along. Angela was a very good girl and such a good sport. It was a cold and very soggy day so we came home and got all
snuggly and had some hot chocolate when we were done. What a good little buddy.
Natalie practiced a lot in December for her first violin recital! Twilight likes her soft violin case.
For one of the December activities, the young women made cookies and cute Christmas tree posters with foamy "ornament" stickers to add on every time they did a small service for someone. The goal was to do one kind thing every day until Christmas.
The girls looked extra cute one morning as we went to the bus stop, oh, and we weren't racing out, so I had to get a picture. It must have been "hat day" at school. I can't remember why Sarah is wearing a Mickey Mouse hat! (o: They have hat days a couple times a year.
If Angela is up, she and Twilight watch us go to the bus stop out the front window. It's
so nice to have the
bus stop right in front of our house.
December 5
th was our traditional ward Christmas Brunch.
The kids and families were encouraged to write little notes on the paper "ornaments" of 3 trees that were hanging on the wall. They were then mailed to the missionaries of our ward. One of the missionaries is our good friend Justin. He was our home teacher for almost 2 years before he went to Mexico on his mission. My girls love him and were excited to make a Christmas note for him.
Once we get the tree up and lights on the tree, then the fun can really begin. I always do the lights, but I never really like it. The one year I let Bob* put the lights on, I kept fixing things that bugged me and thus inherited the traditional chore. We put on Christmas music and pulled out the boxes of ornaments. It's always fun to look back on all the homemade ornaments and ornaments the girls picked in past years. See my blog entry from Dec. 2008 to see some of our favorite ornaments.
Twilight was very curious about the whole thing. She must not remember Christmas last year. The ornaments and lights were so exciting! Our little tree we keep in the family room was constantly being climbed and undecorated, but she mostly left the big tree alone.
The next day, I found a lovely little puddle of what looked like regurgitated pine needles in the living room. I think she tried a taste of the water filled with needles. She learned that lesson the hard way. (o:
A little hot chocolate after all our hard work was a great way to end the night. (o:
This was the ornament Natalie chose this year. I tried so hard to sway her to wait until we could find a little violin, but she insisted she wanted the trumpet. I didn't realize until we were paying for it why she wanted it so bad. She pretended to play it almost every day until we put it away after Christmas.
I've said it before . . . what a nut. (o:
