It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

We have been seriously busy this last few weeks, so we haven't been able to stop and share all the fun stuff we have been doing!

Thanksgiving was great! That is one of my favorite holidays. No gifts, no decorations, just focusing on good food and what we are grateful for in life. Not to mention the fact that I have Mayflower ancestry. Isaac Allerton and his family. Kevin's parents were in Nevada with his sister, so we got together with the Molloys and Kaufmans. We each brought a part of the meal and then all got to take home leftovers. It was great! We all played games and had a fun time.

The weekend after Thanksgiving we put up the trees. This year we bought a new 6.5' pre-lit tree and absolutely covered it with thirty-two years of ornaments. You can barely see the tree! The other tree is all my nativity ornaments. We get a new ornament each year. This year I got a monarch butterfly ornament for the family. Amanda got a silver A, Rebecca got a pink tiara, and Katrina got a handmade Little Einsteins ornament (I just can't justify paying Hallmark $15 for the 3D one that plays the theme song).

On 2 December, we went for the opening walk-thru night of Christmas Tree Lane with the Molloys and the Kaufmans. We walked the two mile route in two hours (including a potty break with a very long line) and got to see all the displays up close. Many of the displays have been there since Kevin and Lora were kids, and others were brand new this year. We have many favorites that we look forward to seeing each year. The older kids were so excited to get to look for all of Santa's reindeer up close! They found Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen and Rudolph. When we got back to the cars, we had hot chocolate, hot Tang, and really yummy gingerbread cookies that Andrea had made. It was a late night, but a lot of fun.

On 4 December, the girls went to make gingerbread houses at the Library. We have been doing that since Amanda was eighteen months old. Amanda is glad that there is not an age limit so that she can still go and do them. I am glad that Amanda is still wanting to go and that it has not gotten too "cool" to do it anymore.

On the 7th, Lora and Andrea Kaufman sang a song called "Baby Christ Child" for the prelude in Sacrament Meeting. That night we went up to Mom and Dad's in Auberry and we helped Dad put the lights on the tree out in the yard by the driveway. They had a live tree about six years ago when they first were building the house, and they planted it next to the driveway. Every year Dad puts lights on it. This year it is probably 12-15' tall! We were going to take a few photos next to the tree so that we could play around with the ideas tat we had and and then retake them later. Well, as luck would have it, we actually got the nearly perfect photo! The tree looks great, we are all smiling, the sun had just set so there was a beautiful glow in the background, AND. . . there was a star in the sky right behind us! (It is actually Saturn, but at this range, it looks like a star.) It turned out great!

On the 9th Rebecca went to the library for a Christmas Storytime and got to make an ornament. It is pink.

In between all of this Amanda has been having meetings twice a week at our house with the Odyssey of the Mind group. They are just about to get their first trial structure made so that they can test it.

On 11 December the Relief Society had their Christmas Party and I was in charge of it. It went really well. We had a progressive dinner of sorts and the soups were especially delicious! The focus was on service and we had a Christmas decoration swap and a Service Swap. Each sister filled out a card with a service that they would be willing to give to another sister, and then the cards were drawn in a "White Elephant" type game. It was a lot of fun! We also had several really wonderful stories that the sisters shared about how giving and receiving service has affected them. It was a lovely evening, and, as we hoped, the fog delayed it's encroachment until after we were done and home.

On 12 December we went to the Ward Christmas Party. This year was a dessert party, so we made fudge. Yum! We took the photos of Amanda and Rebecca with Santa just like we did last year. (Katrina again refused to have anything to do with Santa, even when we offered to sit on his lap with her.) Members of the ward shared family traditions and memories of Christmas and we sang songs. The kids got to decorate cookies. It was fun.

On Saturday I got together with Andrea, Cory and Camille to practice "O Holy Night". I am really proud of myself, because the version that we are singing did not have an alto line, and so I figured out what notes I would sing and created the alto line for Camille and I to sing. I took it to my piano practice on Wednesday and Sister Moses was really impressed and helped me to tweak a couple of spots so that it sounded even better. We practiced really hard and got to the point where we could have sung it a capella if we had to. We got so many compliments when we sang it on Sunday. It sounded so good!

Now we just need to make our Christmas cards and get the last few presents taken care of so we can get things in the mail!