Holiday Festivities

Since Jake's program is only 9 months, moving out here we knew we wouldn't be making it back to the west coast at all during that time. So as the holidays approached we did them by ourselves for the first time. The Johnsons were in town for Thanksgiving, so thanks to them, our friends the Durhams and mostly Leon's Momma Julie we had a splendid feast. We hosted at our house, but thankfully Julie took the reigns on the Turkey, gravy and stuffing while the rest of us supplied a plethora of sides. It didn't turn out to be quite the Martha Stewartesque tablescape etc. that I had envisioned in my head, but I learned a lot about timing etc. that will hopefully be implemented better next time. (case in point not one picture that day due to the chaos of trying to get everything clean/ready by the time we hosted). We had a great day even though we missed all of our loved ones on the other side of the country.

Boston was so much fun around the holiday time. There were so many events going on. We had a fun night attending a tree lighting right outside Faneuil Hall after we had enjoyed a fun dinner with a bunch of other young families in our Ward at Durgin Park (a resturaunt that has actually been around since 1827, its just never ceases to amaze me with getting to experience all the history of everything around here).

Our dear friends, the Webbs threw a beautiful adult holiday party. We got to dress up, mix and mingle and play some rather entertaining couples games.

Our town put on a Christmas thingy on its main street. Jake had school late that night, so I braved the chaos alone with the double stroller. It took me over 30 mins to go about 5 miles (lame), but the kids had a blast. They had Santa, hot chocolate, fried dough (a big hit with the little people as you can see the powdered sugar covering them below) and the most urban petting zoo I have ever witnessed. Different store fronts took on the activities (like Santa was at one of the banks, the petting zoo was in this warehouse thingy etc). Anyway we made our way into the petting zoo and it was literally a bunch of animals in a fenced-in area with the kids all standing around the fence with little cups of food trying to feed the critters who obviously had been feasted out. It was a little hilarious, but the kids still thought it was cool even though there wasn't actual petting at the "zoo."

Most of our holiday traditions revolve around food. My Nana taught me how to make caramels when I was a little girl, and I have made them every year since. I did again this year but was sad to have to throw away as it sat around my house for weeks after Christmas because I didn't have my people to help me eat it!

Carder and his friend Brighton were good sports while their Moms tried to figure out how to do the whole gingerbread house thing. (now I realize why My Mom always just bought the premade kit...so much simpler). Lessons learned: 1) if making your house from scratch use a templet because otherwise it will never fit together 2) make sure your frosting is crazy strong (Royal) and 3) you will put a lot more time into prep than the actual activity will actually hold your child's attention, and you will probably be the one who finishes decorating the house while your little person decides eating the candy is more fun than decorating with it. Carder was rather proud of his creation, we kept it up on our table for decoration all the way through the holidays (even though parts of the house kept disappearing for some reason. I wonder how that was happening...)

The Sunday before Christmas we dressed the kids all festive and took our annual pictures infront of the Tree...

Christmas Eve we were invited over to our friends The Gillmans house along with the Durhams for dinner and a little program. Carder loved sitting at the table with all the big boys, and Brenn loved trying to follow all the big kids around and trying out her new skill of climbing up and down the stairs. (The down part merits the occasional fall, but she is getting better). After dinner the Durhams shared one of their traditions a candy cane hunt. Its essentially an Easter egg hunt, but with candy canes instead, but the lights all get turned off and each child has a flash light to locate their loot. It was quite the hit. Jana was awesome and had all the costumes put together for a little Nativity reenactment for the kids while she read Luke 2. Carder was Joseph and Brenn was the Angel. If you look at the picture of Carder on the far right, you see how he was making sure Mary wouldn't fall off her donkey, it was super cute. Brenn loved her angel wings, she didn't take those babies off til we left to go home later that night. We have been so blessed to have met some of the most wonderful people we have out here and be able to call them our friends.

I busted my "Jackie" and made the kids pose by the tree in their Christmas Eve outfits. (One day I am going to get one of them both doing a good smile in the same picture!)

Brenn's outfit was actually my little sister Kelsie's. I just wanted to eat her up in that jumper! (I am a little sad she only got to wear it twice: once to our ward Christmas party and the other to Christmas Eve dinner...dang babies why do you have to grow so fast!) We played a couple rounds of "Sleeping Bunnies" hence the awkward poses Brenn is sporting in the pics (but it was the only way to get a full body shot). 

Sleeping Bunnies is a song they do in this Ward for nursery and the kids just LOVE it. I teach the 4 turning 5 year olds, and even still if we have extra time at the end of class they are the happiest kids in the world if we play this. It's a song to the tune of 

Are you Sleeping and goes:

Sleeping Bunnies Sleeping Bunnies

Go to Sleep Go to Sleep

(shhhhhhhh)

<then all the kids lay down on the floor and you can turn off the lights, and then if you did that you turn them back on as you sing the next part>

Wake up Sleeping Bunnies Wake up Sleeping Bunnies

Hop Hop Hop, Hop Hop Hop

<and the children hop around the room. The kids like to get creative with it and come up with all sorts of animals to do, the favorites around these parts are bunnies, elephants, alligators and lions).

After we got that out of our system, we took part in another tradition, opening our Christmas PJs. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Apostol for keeping us included even though we are so far away.

Christmas Morning was great. We woke up to a white Christmas. I controlled myself and allowed my kids to wake up on their own instead of waking them up (I know I have a problem, the little kid in me just still gets so excited for Christmas morning!) Brenn loved going through her stocking (her favorite thing these days was to load/unload things, so getting to do this and realizing that those things she was loading/unloading were yummy goodies was quite the delight to this little princess. Brenn loved her new toys and Carder loved "teaching" Brenn how to play with them.

Brenn was particularly fond of her new dress ups. She was cracking us up how she needed to immediately adorn herself in her new fancy garb.

The kids had a jolly old time playing with all their new things and especially loved jumping on the bubble wrap together (classic).

After Christmas we went down and visited Jake's Aunt and Uncle in New Jersey (post to follow). The kids both came down with ear infections while we were there, so we came home by New Years. We made our annual Greek Lukamadas (great grandma Apostol's recipe) as well as some other wanna be fancy finger foods and our friends the Webbs came over and hung out with us for a while that evening. They have two little ones as well, so we all didn't last together til midnight, but we let our kids watch the concert and somehow they made it past the ball dropping. Carder banged his pots and we all got our New Years kisses. (As you can see Brenn wasn't loving it and was asleep minutes after these photos were taken).