Christmas Time

Some things leading up to Christmas...

A few years ago I made this Christmas tree out of baby food jars:

It's an advent! 

Inside each day is a treat and a slip of paper that has a scripture, song and an activity listed on it

I love having the scripture and church song to help make sure we focus on Christ for the season,

 and then most of the activities and the treats are just for fun, and they help the kids look forward to each daily countdown

One day the treat was marshmallows and the activity was to make snowmen from baby food jars:

We were painting a handprint wreath one day for the activity

Aria always gets very involved in her art, 

for her it's all about experiencing it, rather than what it will look like

We went with our old standby of making ornaments out of colored glue: 

A lots more!

Also our ward had a double Christmas party.

Friday night was adults only with a nice dinner and such, 

then Saturday morning was a breakfast and fun with the kids

They had Santa very briefly before we went and learned about the real meaning of Christmas. 

Only one of our Children would go see Santa... it was Corin! 

Our whole family with the big man: 

Then Christmas eve morning Jason and a friend were building the climbing dome in the backyard so I needed to keep the kids away so it would still be a surprise the next day. I had Parker play in the bath and painted my and the girls' nails.

It took forever and was still a little sloppy looking but we had candy cane stripes on our nails for Christmas 

Terra kept getting it mixed up and calling them cotton candy nails

Anyway, we love the Christmas season as a reason to add extra focus on Christ to our lives