December Wrap Up

December has long come and gone, but I can't skip over such a fun month.  It was busy and lots of memories were created.

We visited Santa at Cabella's.

 This was such an easy and fun experience.  

At least we still have one Believer and the other two are always up for supporting anything Santa:)

Our favorite Spirit Night for Evan's school happened in December.  The kids get to decorate a pizza box in class and then our pizza gets delivered in that box!

Pizza in Outer Space

We bought an ice skating membership this year, so we have gone multiple times.  The kids have gotten pretty good.

Seeing them hold hands is just the sweetest.

Nora had her preschool Christmas program and we got a family picture.

It was our last Christmas program at preschool. We have been coming here for years.  It made a little sad.

We went to the Bentonville Christmas Parade, which was a night parade this year.

We took a picture with our famous friends from Fixer to Fabulous :)

I came across this fun indoor activity on momfessionals.com and we all loved it.

On a cold day when the kids were all in school I wrapped a lot of boxes of various sizes with butcher paper and we created a Box city.

I got out lots of markers, stickers, tape, wrapping paper etc and we created a box city.

This is what the kids came home to from school.....

 Hard at work creating the box city.....

 A house decorated for Christmas.....

 Had to have a hospital....

 ......and a toy store

 ......a Wal-Mart

 ......Evan created  golf course

 .......and of course a Starbucks :)

This was a great activity for a cold winter afternoon and there is always an abundance of boxes right before Christmas.

We made and decorated sugar cookies

 Everything is a competition at our house, so Evan kept score of the best sugar cookie voting.

Evan had a visit from Santa and Mrs Clause at his school party.

 We had our annual friends Christmas party......I think we determined that this has been going on for 16 years or so.

Love this group of friends

 Grandma had asked Hannah to make. happy Birthday Jesus cake for Christmas.  She made a marble cake with fresh strawberries and buttercream in the middle....

This brings us to Christmas Eve.  Unfortunately Nora was diagnosed with the Flu that day, so we had to adjust our plans a little bit.  I took the other two to church and Scott stayed home with Nora.  We made Tacos for dinner and then opened one gift.

He could hardly wait....

 Hannah was very excited....

 Even with the flu she had a smile on her face most of the time

First round of gifts was a success:)

Purse for me

AirPods for Scott

Hair mannequin for Hannah.  Finally I don't need to sit there for hours anymore....

She put the mannequin to the test right away

New Fitbit for Evan

These are the only pictures I got on Christmas morning.  Everybody had a great Christmas.

Later on Christmas morning Scott left with Hannah and Evan to Branson to see his family.  Nora and I stayed back another night since she was still running a little fever.

We did a lot of snuggling on the couch and playing with her new ice cream set.

Hannah had left her hair mannequin mounted to the kitchen island in the spot that she usually sits.  It scared me several times and was a little creepy.  I ordered her a tripod to put it on that day, so now it is in her room.

We were sad to miss Christmas dinner, but made the best out of it by resting up.  We all had the flu shot, so I do think it made her case of the flu pretty mild.

The next afternoon we headed out to Branson as well.  I told Nora she still had to take it easy and wasn't allowed to run around with all her cousins.  She said that's Ok, she will just walk slowly behind them :).  

We missed out on the Escape Room fun.  Evan makes Escape rooms at home all of the time using bike locks, padlocks, suitcases, lots of paper and tape and the list goes on....

The family gift from Irv and Jeannie was a night out to the Dolly Parton Stampede.

Funny story about this picture is that we had finally wrangled everybody up there and took the picture and then we get ready to leave and realized that Irv was missing from the picture.  Haha!  So, we had to get everybody back ups there again to re-take it.

We all had a wonderful Christmas and we rounded out the year with a stay at Jenny and Dave's lake house for New Year's.

We had a great evening of good food, good drinks and good company and we all made it up until midnight (barely).

Oh and round #3 of decorating gingerbread houses.....

 Scott went to the store with the kids to get a few things for New Years Eve and found the gingerbread houses on clearance and then a whole lot of other stuff.  This is the picture he sent me from the store.....

Meanwhile I was at home doing this.....

It felt so good to declutter.

Ok, back to New Years Eve.  

We made it until midnight!!!

Evan the party animal is without a shirt on.

The next morning Dave and Hannah came up with a scavenger hunt

They burnt the edges of the paper on the stove

It was good to get everybody outside and burn off some energy

 Of course it turned into a fierce competition between boys and girls

Nora also got some baby time in.  

One last highlight of December for me was the Back 40 trail run and race.  I did the 5k trail run and 20 mile bike race.  It was cold out, but so much fun.