We sort of stumbled upon a spectacularly Christmas-fun-filled week. We only had one festive thing planned, but then we ended up doing a ton of fun, festive things!

On Monday night for Family Party we had a rousing “indoor snowball fight.” We got a box of indoor snowballs as part of Josh’s triumph at the ugly sweater competition last Saturday, and we genuinely had a lot of fun with them! Sorry for the lack of photographic evidence. Also on Monday I took the kids to the library and they had their super fun scene setters up, so of course we had to take pictures!

On Tuesday afternoon Josh called from work to see if I wanted to bring the kids downtown to go on the scavenger hunt at the Grand America Hotel. We did, and it was lots of fun! The best part was definitely the bathroom there. I felt like royalty just walking in there! If you haven’t ever used the bathroom on the main floor of the Grand America, you should use the Christmas window displays as an excuse and then go!
Anyway, after that we decided that instead of Josh going back to work and being responsible for an hour and then coming home, we should go get an early dinner at the mall food court and then go see the lights on Temple Square! The lights were beautiful and it was fun to be spontaneous!

Friday was Carter’s preschool Christmas program. He has been singing Christmas songs and practicing his part for weeks, and He did such a great job! We are so proud of him!

There was the big family progressive party in Utah county that night, but it was already late enough that we decided to go home and have a mini party and get the kids to bed only 1.5 hours late instead of 4 hours late. We made delicious peppermint oreo milkshakes! I took a picture, but felt somewhat silly posting it.

Yesterday, we got it into our heads that we needed to make gingerbread houses. We had been planning on doing it this season–out of real gingerbread, because Fay and Carter don’t remember when we did it that way before–but hadn’t settled on when. But when it got in our heads yesterday it stuck good, so Josh made the gingerbread last night (while I read a zillion pages of the Book of Mormon trying to finish by the end of the year) and we decorated houses and gingerbread men today!

And then tonight after dinner we decided it was a good time to go on our annual Christmas-lights drive. We like to go to the fancy houses in South Jordan and see their extravagant light displays! We saw one house tonight that was totally Grinch themed! Green lights everywhere and 3 Grinch figures in different places. It was Fay and Portia’s favorite.

It was a really fun week! I am so grateful for Christmas and the excitement and joy it brings to life! I am also grateful that it is a time for me to draw closer to the Savior so that in the new year I can hopefully be at least a tiny bit more like Him.