Christmas Festivities

Christmas Dinner

Grandma Bobbie was in charge of setting the table.

Notice there are place cards.  Amara was in charge of those, and she got so creative with them.  The following photos are close ups of each card. 

Our dinner was an around-the-world theme. 
On the menu:
Asian Sesame Beans
Greek Salad
Crab Cakes
Lentils
Krab Potato Salad (a holiday favorite from my childhood)
Brown Bread

Christmas Eve Pajamas

It's always been a tradition since I was a kid that we would open up a pair of pajamas on Christmas Eve.  This tradition has been fun to continue with my family as well.  Grandma Debby got these cute jammies for the girls this year. 

So fun!  P.S. Notice that our Christmas tree is really only half our tree, set up on a table.  This was because of our new puppy.  We put most of the small presents that we thought he'd tear open on the table.  He did get into a little trouble on a few occasions, but no surprises were spoiled. 

Amara loved her unicorn hood and Lily loved her light-up Christmas earrings.

Christmas Day

Santa came!  Are those hoverboards I see? Yessirreeeeee!

Someone bright-eyed and bushy-tailed spotted something Santa brought that she wanted!

Grandma revealing the treasures in her stocking.

Pippin got a few gifts of his own.

Steve got a "naughty or nice" candy cane game: some were gross and some were good, but they looked identical.

This one is so BIG!  WHAT COULD IT BE???

Are you excited, Lily?

It's a pooper scooper! Yay!

Lily donning her new sweater.

Christensen Christmas Party

Grandpa Art and Grandma Margaret standing behind their beautiful Christmas centerpiece.

 We always enjoy getting together for a Christmas party, especially the traditional Christensen party.  

Uncle Robert and Aunt Jane Force came to the party this year!  Here they are opening their white elephant gift.  We love the white elephant gift exchange.  It's always fun to see what everyone ends up with.

Something Random I thought was funny from our Christmas vacation...

Tommy getting red slime out to play with, standing on the table and plopping it from as high a height as he could.

 

Random Highlights from December

Family Newsletter/ Christmas Card

We decided this year to give our neighbor 12 days of Christ's names.  Each day we'd attach one of the names of Christ to a little treat, and deliver it to his house. Under different circumstances, we'd make it a secret drop-off-and-run type of thing, but we knew that our neighbor has security cameras and it would be pointless. Plus it's good to say hi face-to-face now and then.

Mandy shared a good sugar cookie recipe online with us, which was awesome because we like to bake around Christmas time!  Too bad I don't have a picture of the cookies.

My mom invited me to be her date to her work's Christmas party.  They served us a delicious steak dinner grilled up by the owner of the hotel, and we played some silly games.

Steve needed an excuse to use his new camera lens, so both Lily and I got some photos taken.

Here's another random yet important-to-document picture taken at April's house when we visited her for Christmas break and she made us her amazing, wonderful, super delicious baked salmon. 

Earlier in the month we got to see some of my dad's gingerbread house come together.  Amara even helped design the horse stencil for the carousel.  Here's the finished product, based on Toy Story 3.  The carousel even spun around because it was on an electric turntable.  

These last few photos are of me with our puppy, Pippin.  He's so adorable and he loves me lots.  

November 2019 Highlights

This post is mostly just a highlights from November post.  We did our community photography class.  We also took family pictures.  

Lily and I took our long locks and chopped them good.  Mya in our church ward studies at the hair college and she gave us our haircuts.  I loved my new do!

Young Women's Excellence night was in November and both Lily and Amara worked hard to earn their Young Womanhood medallions and a whole bunch of ribbons!  I was very proud of them and the work they put in!

Lily's 10 hour project she chose to display was her digital arts.  She had poetry, designs, and photography.  She is a very creative person.  I love when she shares her expresssions of creativity with me and others.

She also made a streusel apple pie.

Amara's project she did was Teddys for refugees.  She sewed  and embroidered teddy bears and sent them to Dolls of Hope so they would be distributed to young refugee children.

November ended with one of my favorite holidays, Thanksgiving.  We enjoyed dinner at the Christensen/Haroldson household.  

We also went to my dad's house to help with the gingerbread house.  Amara created a stencil of a merry go round horse for the carousel.  It looked great!

The gingerbread house was a scene from Toy Story 3.  It was auctioned off at the Festival of Trees to benefit the Primary Children's hospital.