December photo dump

If you look at the back of Ann Marie's hair you can see she has a blonde strip.

Ann Marie's preschool had a Christmas party. We had a potluck dinner, then the kids did a nativity presentation (some siblings participated) and sang some Christmas songs.

Here is Ann Marie singing one of the songs in the car:



Then we decorated cookies and gingerbread houses. This one was mostly Ryan's creation:

Ryan took the kids to the church one day to ride bikes.

She's disturbingly good at sneaking ice cream for herself in plain sight.

Ann Marie's preschool had a field trip to see The Nutcracker! I think at first she thought she was going to be allowed to go up on the stage and dance because she insisted on wearing this costume. I had never seen The Nutcracker performed before, and I really enjoyed it. The last performance by the sugar plum fairy with her partner was so beautiful it about made me cry. Ann Marie lost interest after the intermission and wanted to run up and down and dance in the aisles instead of watching, so that was kind of annoying, but I guess that's about what you can ask of a three-year-old at a ballet.

We made these advent calendars at a Relief Society activity. It had pockets for each day to hold the daily challenge for the church's Light the World campaign.

Heidi and Kevin were invited to go bowling with friends for a birthday party, and when they lost interest the friends' parents let them all play some arcade games. Heidi ended up with over 80 tickets!

Ann Marie had her check-up. I think between moving and waiting for insurance we had to postpone it until December last year, so now she gets check-ups six months after her birthday. She had a finger stick (which I expected) and three shots (which I did not expect and therefore didn't prepare her for). She was quite upset about the shots, but as you can see from the pictures below, she recovered. She did like her happy face bandaid. Afterwards we went to a friend's house to decorate cookies and play.

Heidi was invited to a birthday party where all the girls got makeovers. I ended up staying because Heidi was upset. She didn't know any of the other girls except the friend (from church) who invited her, so I think she was feeling very shy. She consented to having her nails painted and a little bit of make up. She chose brown eyeshadow (which is what I wear, if I wear any makeup) and some mascara. Here is the final result:

The kids always look forward to doing the advent calendar.

We finally got a tree. I think it was two weeks before Christmas. That's about how long Ryan can handle it.

Kevin posing.

I caught this sight at the ward Christmas party and was so excited the moment lasted long enough to catch on camera!

We think this is a camellia bush. Last year we had a bud drop problem, but this winter the flowers are blooming, which has been very exciting!