Shakespear Shuffle

CHRISTMAS  2015

Another Christmas came & went quickly.  My favorite part (as usual) are the traditions.  Every evening we do something Christmasy.  We did a Hershey kiss count down chain so the kids ate one kiss every day until Christmas.  I noticed Hunter wasn't eating his but keeping them in a bag so I asked him about it.  He said he was keeping them & then going to give them to Daddy in his stocking.  He is the sweetest kid ever!  Anyone who knows Hunter & his love of food would know what a sacrifice that was! I made sure Jeremy knew where that gift came from & how special it was.

 

Another night we did snowflakes.  Jeremy noticed a mole hill or two in our backyard & went out to investigate.  He saw it moving a little when he got out there, grabbed his shovel & whack!  Mole for dinner! (not really...he was actually super stoked he got it on the first attempt)

Instead of a homemade ornament this year we made snowmen socks.  They turned out cute (& a little creepy) & as the month wore on they became more misshapen & slouchy like they were melting.  It was weird.

For a Scout project Hyrum helped his Dad make these wooden slats for displaying art work in our art room.  I LOVE them!  Way better than on the fridge.

A generous & kind elderly gentleman had a piano that he & his wife had been the only ones to own & they'd had it for decades.  Well I think she had passed away & it had just been sitting there for 10 years so he wanted to give it away for free.  What?!  I had recently told our piano teacher if she ever came across a good deal on a real piano we would be interested.  Our 10 year old electric piano has served us well over the years but I was really starting to want a real one (I've always wanted a real one really).  Anyway this gentleman called the elementary school, the school told the music teacher, he told his wife who happens to be our piano teacher & she told me.  We went to check it out & picked it up the same day.  Now we have two pianos & he also gave us a cool lap harp as a bonus so there is lots of music going on around here :)  The lap harp has music you slide underneath the strings & the note is drawn under the right string so even if you can't "read" music you can still play songs.  It has been fun to hear Em, Justy & Dallen play familiar Christmas tunes.

One of my favorite activities we do is to go through our toy room.  I love getting rid of stuff!  We had a garbage pile, pile to give away to charity & a pile to put in the basement for grandkids.  I know - thinking WAY ahead of myself here.  Or maybe for baby E when she arrives.  She may like trains right?  Even though none of my boys ever really did?

One activity was our yearly Christmas concert at the school.  It was fun to have 4 kids participating.  Hyrum & Hunter both played prelude Christmas music before it started.

 

On the left is how Dallen felt about being there for 2 straight hours.  On the right is how he feels about eating cookies.

 

We love making treats & giving them to our friends (as long as we can keep a few for us at home :))

 

 

A new activity we tried was riding the Polar Express train in Portland.  I've always wanted to do that but the kids always seemed too small to really enjoy it.  I'm glad we did it but that was definitely a once ever thing.  It was crazy expensive & wasn't that amazing after all but fun to try!

Shepherd's night is always a big hit.

Protecting their paper & cotton ball sheep from the great wolf predator (Daddy)

To help get Hunter pumped & prepped for his baptism in addition to teaching him in FHE every week we asked the sister missionaries to come over & teach him the discussions like he was an investigator.  I loved doing that for Hyrum & will continue the tradition.

Jeremy & I went to the preshow of the long awaited Star Wars: The Force Awakens.  I may have been a little overly excited about it & Jeremy was awesome enough to go along with dressing up.  He's the best :)  He wore a Star Trek shirt to the last Star Trek movie so sometimes it's his idea :)

Gingerbread house

Hyrum had the opportunity to play his binder full of Christmas music as prelude before the production of 'Once Upon a Mattress' (princess & the pea story) at our local theater.  I was so proud of how well he did!  He played for 15 minutes straight!  A guy that works there asked me if Shakespear was his stage name or real name.  Whaaaat?? Yes we gave our 9 year old a stage name.  I laughed hard about that comment later, not in his face.

Snowmen pizzas & movie nights are always a favorite too.

I thought this was so funny - reading Calvin & Hobbes while listening to our "elevator" type music that's programmed into the piano.

Sleepover & Elf!

Hanging up the last Advent ornament

We had my parents & Grammy with us for Christmas Eve & Christmas day which was very special.  We loved having them here!  It made the nativity much nicer to have that many more people participating :)

 

 

Presents!