The Christmas season officially begins for us on Thanksgiving. Josh’s family has a tradition of running a 4 mile race in the morning, and Josh has a tradition of dressing up as Santa for the run (because he can). Fay got wind of that and needed a costume of her own. Carter wanted to use his Olaf costume once her learned Fay was going to wear a costume. So then it was a family costume affair.
I made Fay’s costume, and I was quite pleased with how it turned out! Especially since I spent less than $3 on supplies (I used some stuff I had left over) and less than 3 hours working on it.
She’s just about the cutest elf there ever was!
Here’s our whole Christmasy crew! Santa, one big elf, one little elf, Olaf, and adorable classic snowman!
Then we went to my family’s house and had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner! My favorite part was the gravy. Instead of a last helping of food, I had a cup of gravy! It was so good! No regrets!
After Thanksgiving dinner each year we try to decorate for Christmas while listening to Christmas music. But it had been an early morning for Carter with no nap during the day, so he fell asleep in the car and had no interest in waking up to decorate. So we did a little that night, but saved most of it for the next morning.
Carter decorating the tree–still in 2/3 of his Olaf costume from the morning before.
Since the Christmas season began we have enjoyed many activities including:
Going to the mall! We like going to the mall at Christmastime, even if we don’t buy anything because there’s lots of decorations, energy, and other excitement! Plus it’s all inside!
Cuties playing in the car rides at the mall. We don’t ever actually put any money in, but they still like sitting in them and pretending to drive to Hawaii.
Going to the Festival of Trees! The Festival of Trees is my favorite ever! I could explain all the reasons why, but you’d all get bored. It’s just a lovely blend of everything to love about Christmas!
This isn’t a particularly special tree setup, but Fay had just seen another girl get her picture by a tree, and needed it done for her too.
Decorating Christmas Cookies! Josh found a super delicious recipe for sugar cookies and we decorated them with fancy piping bags (because why do it at all if you’re not going to go all the way?!)
Josh with his poinsettia cookie! You gotta love his hair!
The other parent-decorated cookies. Mine are the bottom 3 and I’m rather proud of them. I accidentally brushed my hand through the snowflake right before the picture.
Seeing the lights at Temple Square! Growing up, my favorite family Christmas outing was when we’d go to the food court at the mall (where our parents would send us in groups of two with $20 to buy fast food! So many good memories of buying all the foods we possibly could with $10 apiece!) and then go see the lights afterwords. We did the food court before lights last year and it was super fun, but this year I was in the mood to eat something healthy. It didn’t make sense for Josh to come home from downtown on the train and then go all the way back up, so we brought our dinner with us and ate it at the foodcourt. I felt a little silly then–we had a pot of soup we carried through the mall and then ate at the food court–but I feel pretty cool about it now.
Homemade soup and rolls in the food court. I love Carter and Portia in this picture!
I’m not the best at taking selfies of the whole family. But here we are anyway.
Gingerbread houses! Josh made a working cuckoo clock! (Well, the clock didn’t work, and the cuckoo had to be manually sprung, but it was still pretty great!)
Fay, Carter, and I each made one too, but they were nothing like Josh’s!
Ugly Sweaters! So our ward had an ugly sweater contest at the Christmas party this year. Josh told me about how excited the guys in Elders’ quorum were about it, but we didn’t really talk about doing one. Then one day we decided we had better win the thing! So, Josh went to the dollar store and got a ton of sparkly gold stuff to put on a sweater. I was looking up ideas about ugly sweaters (there are some pretty stupid/inappropriate/irreverent ideas out there) and found this sweater that has a little pocket that looks like a fireplace and you can stick your phone into it and have a fire video playing. I thought a live fire would win us the contest, but I thought it would be more fun to have a bigger one. So we decorated a cereal box to look like a fireplace, cut out a hole to show the screen, and hot-glued it to the back of Josh’s gaudy gold sweater.
The front
The back!
By the way, there was another sweater very similar to Josh’s–though silver instead of gold–and the competition was quite close. But in the end, the fireplace put Josh’s over the edge! We won! Such a proud moment!
One last thing Christmas calls for is, of course, decorating the mantel! (Seriously, what did I do with myself before I had this thing?!) I’m a little bit particular (a lot particular) about what mantel looks like, so when Fay gets super excited about helping me with it, I sometimes have a hard time giving her the sort of jobs she would like. She wants to decorate the whole thing and put anything she wants wherever she wants. I want her to place the thing I tell her in the precise location I tell her. But this year, she figured out a way to get everything she wanted. She designated the bench in our entry as her mantel and she gets full reign over it. It works well for both of us.
Fay and her mantel take 1. She has redecorated it at least 5 times.
My mantel. Fay insisted on the ornaments on the sides. I guess she wasn’t completely satisfied with her own mantel. Also, I wanted matching stockings, so I made them out of sheets Mother gave me!
Christmas is very busy and lots of fun!
