Christmastime 2019

Its Christmastime!  (Or is was, when these pictures were taken).  Unfortunately, I don't remember in detail a lot of stuff that was going on a year and a couple of months later, but I'll try and narrate the pictures.  Those each tell 1,000 words, right?  Hope so.

The kids all have a little tree in their room  This one was Cora's, and she took my phone and took a bunch a pictures so I'm posting a few.  I love the Chewbacca ornament on the bottom best.

Cora also drew a picture of the Grinch I thought was cute.  There are so many Grinch movies, but my favorite is still the original 20-minute cartoon version.  Right?

Cora was in the choir at Orchard Elementary again this year, and she loved it.  They had a Christmas concert, and unfortunately, we didn't get there three hours early and Cora is short and was on the front row, which was a little problem, but the stage looked pretty:

 If I zoomed up on my phone you could see her (grey shirt, white skirt, front row with long blonde hair) singing her little heart out.  They did a great job.

Afterwards we went to Kneaders for a treat and Cora wanted to stand in front of their cute Christmas tree:

Arden deemed herself sufficiently glammed up to want to get in on the action.  

Dax didn't want to get a picture that day, and I can't remember why I took this picture of him around the same time, but here is my handsome boy, although in a less festive background:

I was a little bored with my hair around this time so I did something rather drastic and went very dark and kind of RED:

It was kind of fun, a little Christmassy, right?

We were in a million different places, as usual, on the night of the Ward Christmas party, only me and Cora were available to go.  Cora went to and sat on Santa's lap, mostly because I wanted to get a picture of our neighbor in his Elf costume.  Hilarious!!

At some point of the evening I was helping with cleaning up and Cora took about 27 pictures of herself eating a candy cane.  This one was my favorite so here it is:

Soon after was the Haun Family Christmas party.  Santa showed up here as well, and here is group shot with the kids.  They so pretty:

And here is a group shot with most of the grandkids.  They are all getting so big!

I saw Grandma kissing Santa Claus!  The kids were supposed to act surprised, and they did so with varying levels of success.  

Cora did another session of taking 50 or so selfies on my phone, so I picked a couple and posted them here.  If you are going to do a selfie session on my phone be prepared to get a couple posted in places you may not expect.  

She was mostly working on perfecting her duck lips.  Maybe still some work needed.

A new week, a new party!  Here are some pictures from the Zaugg Family party Dax and Santa!

Cora and Santa.  (Cora got glasses for a mild case of far sightedness, but hardly wore them outside of school.  I can't remember why she was wearing them at this Christmas party.  But she looks cute in them!)

Arden is still willing to sit on Santa's knee....in exchange for some candy.

We went down to see the lights at Temple Square!  I don't know why I hardly took any pictures!  It was pretty, anyway.  

Before we knew it, it was Christmas Eve!  We kept up our tradition of going to Grandma's house and watching Muppets Christmas Carol and eating pizza from Ligori's in Layton.  It feels nice and cozy and warm and comforting and I love it.

I always have some wrapping to do on Christmas Eve.  Loki's favorite thing is "helping" with the wrapping by unraveling all of the ribbon and tearing up the wrapping paper.  Thanks, Loki Pokie.  

Christmas Tree on Christmas Eve!  

Christmas morning!!!  Notice that it is dark still.  It was the crack of dawn, but look how excited we are!  And look how spoiled!

We are so cute on our Christmas jammies!  

Hooray for Christmas, I miss it already.

After many many presents were opened, we had traditional pancakes!  

We did the usual Christmas rounds, with stops at Grandma's to see cousins and....open more presents.

We next went to Grandma Zaugg's but for some reason the only pictures I took were of Dax and his new double light saber!  He was so excited!  In hind sight, maybe this wasn't the best present since he had broken both sides within 6 months...but he had fun with it while it lasted.  

We went up to the cabin for the week between Christmas and New Years as per usual.  There was plenty of snow for sledding, and Olive loves nothing more than chasing her people down the sledding hill barking her head off and trying to bite their mittens off.

Cora thinks that fresh mountain snow is the most delicious kind of snow.  I love her poofy hat.  

Arden was probably being a teenager and staying indoors to watch whatever show she happened to be binging on Netflix that week.  Her favorite thing was staying in bed 23.5 hours a day in her pajamas, looking like a zombie and only emerging from her Netflix cage to eat and scowl and whoever mentions that she engage in some other activity.  

She didn't even want to go skiing on such a beautiful day as this!  I didn't participate in skiing due to my ankle not quite being ready to be strapped into a ski boot all day, but I hung out in the lodge all day so I could help with getting people in and out of their various layers and helping with renting and returning skis and such.  It was a beautiful day in the mountains, and I think a couple of those shadows might be my people:

We partied it up on New Year's!  Grandma and Grandpa always do a good job of bringing up lots of fun party supplies for the littles.  They had festive head gear, and fun horns and things to blow.  We had plenty of sparkling cider to toast the new year...the new DECADE!  2020!  How exciting!  (If we only knew)....

We didn't know, and so we welcomed 2020 with much noise and celebration.

Grandpa is getting the poppers out, and we sprayed and popped glitter all over the freezing cold deck and had a grand old time.  

I'm sure we were a little grouchy the next day, as we had to go home and we were tired from staying up.  Cora and Dax always seem to struggle on the day we go home from the cabin.  Probably because we make them clean the bathroom and horrible stuff like that.

And just like that, the holidays were over!  I always hate taking the tree down and putting the Christmas decorations away.  Before I took down the Christmas Cards, I took a quick picture of some:

I don't know how much longer Christmas cards will be a thing, with everything going digital.  But I still like the get-them-in-the-mail and hold-them-in-your-hands kind.  I hope they don't go away completely.