Tons of Christmas Activities, A Wedding, and A Gymnastics Performance!

So. . . I'm not going to lie! I'm pretty sure this is the LONGEST post I've ever done! I uploaded about half of the pictures last Monday with the intentions of doing the journaling part later in the week. Well, I had something EVERY.SINGLE.NIGHT! I haven't put my kids to bed in a week. Either Shaun has or a babysitter has! And as for the days, my laptop got a virus on it Wednesday morning. It was the craziest thing! I was working on it in the morning, I left to take Maisey to preschool, and by the time I got home 15 minutes later, my laptop had been taken over and my hard drive cleared! It was just a crazy week! So I decided to add this week's pictures to this post and make in one gigantic post! And because of that, the pictures I added today are first, and there are so many that I am not going to go through and put them in order!

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Last Thursday, Dec. 9th, we had a play group Christmas party at the Haycock's! It was a candy cane theme, and the kids made ornaments and candy cane reindeer, frosted cookies, watched a fun Christmas show, and ate a yummy lunch! My kids had tons of fun! Thanks Haycock's!

Maisey eating her cookie, which she frosted so nicely!

Gagey eating his cookie, which he didn't have enough patience to wait for his mommy to frost!

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Saturday, December 11th, was a packed full day! We started at my mom's ward Christmas Party! It was a brunch with Santa! Too bad my kids are so scared of Santa! We enjoyed some yummy food!


Gage got closer than Maisey would! Maisey wouldn't even wait in line to see him!

Then we headed to Maisey's gymnastics performance! She was more nervous this year than she was last year! She wasn't sure about performing in front of hundreds of people, but she did GREAT!!! Her class and the other tot class did somersaults, bear crawls, bunny hops, jumping off the big cheese mat, and other stuff from class!

Here are both classes right before they went on!

Here is Maisey doing her somersaults!

Jumping off the big cheese!

Taking the final bow!

In the evening, Shaun and I had our Elder's Quorum Christmas Party! It was a Mele Kalikimaka theme and was so fun! We had Hawaiian Haystacks for dinner and I made pineapple upside down cake for dessert! We had our annual games of Christmas Jeopardy and White Elephant! This was the most attended party the Elder's Quorum has had since Shaun has been the president! We had 30 people there! It was AWESOME! We may have to hold it at the church next year if we get that good of a turn out again!

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On Sunday, December 12th, we had the Stake Presidency Christmas Fireside! I thought the kids would love all of the singing because they did the weekend before at a different Christmas event that we went to, but boy was I wrong! Gage lasted about 5 minutes, and Maisey about 20! In their defense, it was a lot different this year! There was a lot of talking between songs, which in the past there hasn't been ANY! Before the fireside, we went to my mom's for dinner and some pictures! We also had my brother, Scott, dress up in my dad's Santa suit so maybe, just maybe I could actually get a picture of my kids with Santa! :) (My Dad used to dress up as Santa every year for us when we were little, then for my mom's class at school when she started teaching full-time! He LOVED to be Santa!)

I love Christmas outfits!!! :)

Look how handsome my little man is!

They sure love their grammy!

P.S. Gage started saying Grandma this week! He says it ALL.THE.TIME!!! He is definitely a grammy's boy!

Our festive fam!

Maisey was SO brave to sit on Santa's lap! My brother put the suit on over his clothes out in the family room so she understood it was just uncle Scott wearing a costume!

Gage still wasn't sure, until Santa broke out a gift for each of them!

They each got a zhu zhu pet and had so much fun playing with them that night!

The kids also got to help Grammy decorate this tree for Papa for the cemetery!

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Last Monday, December 6th, we had our annual Gingerbread House FHE with the Hoopes and Maughans! This year we acted out the nativity, because Maisey wanted to be Mary so bad!

The dad's were the wise men, Maisey was Mary, Peyton was Joseph, Porter was a shepherd, Angela was the star, Tish was the Angel, and Hudson and Gage wanted no part of it! :)

Our fam working on our house!

At one point all the kids were in the play room watching a Christmas show. . .

. . . and the parents were all out decorating the houses!

Each kid was so proud of their house!

Silly faces!

(I'm pretty sure Porter is eating his house in EVERY picture I have!)

The little guys wanted in on the action too!

Then the adults played this silly little ball-catcher game! I don't even know what it's called! My sister sent it for the kids! It was really fun! Shaun and I lost though!

(See Gage in the back right? That's the story of our lives right now -- Light Switches!)

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Now back to the Monday before, November 29th. We decorated our Christmas tree for FHE! It was a lot of fun and the kids have done way better than I expected about leaving everything alone. We have lots of presents under there and Gage is not tempted at all by them!

She is just absorbing every bit of the holiday cheer!

The final product!

Last year, the train was like a babysitter for me! Partly because Gage couldn't crawl yet! He would just sit there and watch it go around and around! This year he is all over that thing! He loves to be in charge of the remote! As long as it's moving he does really well at watching it and not touching but. . .

. . . once it stops moving that thing is derailed within seconds! So now we leave it up on the mantle and a couple times a day we take it down and turn it on!

(I know. . . I'm a mean mom!)

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On December 2nd, we had the opportunity to drive to Tri Cities to be at the sealing of Shaun's best friend, Kurt and his now wife, Emalee. We are so excited for both of them! We were able to go with out our kids (Thanks Angela! We owe you BIG!) and just enjoy a whole day together!

You know they're best friends when they both marry girls with the same name! :)

The whole gang!

Shaun, Kurt, and Jacob!

They were all roommates when Shaun and I started dating! We haven't seen Jacob since we graduated from BYU! It was so so so fun to catch up with him! He is a crack up!

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On Saturday, December 4th, we had our ward Christmas party, which was also a brunch. The primary kids did this little program thing and Maisey was excited to be a part of it!

Maisey is having serious anxiety about Santa this year (and who am I kidding. . . every year!). We ended up telling her who Santa was going to be so that she would even get close to him! A few nights before the party she came out of her room at like 10:00 crying because she was so afraid of Santa. She told me she didn't want to go to the party and she wanted me to call Grandma to see if she could baby sit her instead! So, to get her even standing next to him was a HUGE accomplishment!

Gagey wasn't a huge fan either. . . UNTIL food was involved! That's my boy!

Later that evening, we went to a Mexican place for dinner!

Gage discovered the plate of beans! He started out pretty well with the chip, but by the end was shoveling handfuls of beans in his mouth! We had to stop at Target to buy him new pants and shirt so we could take him to our next stop.

We went to a Nativity display put on by a stake in South Salem and it was INCREDIBLE!!!! I just accidentally deleted my picture that I loaded on here of the live nativity (and I'm not going back to do it again!) but both of my kids really enjoyed it! They had a live camel that Maisey thought was pretty cool!

Then we headed inside for the nativity display! They had all kinds from the most extravagant to the most simple, large life size pieces, to tiny little bity ones! It was really neat!

This was Shaun's favorite!

And this was my favorite! All made of chocolate!

Then we headed to the kids room where they made donkey ornaments, played in Mary's kitchen and Jospeh's workshop, and listened to the shepherds tell the story of Jesus' birth by a camp fire.

In the room after that, the kids got to write a gift they would like to give to Jesus this year. Maisey was so serious when she answered, "A Rattle." It was so cute! She just loves that Jesus was once a baby! Shaun added to her answer "And be good for my parents." She got to put her paper in a gift basket for Jesus.

Maisey is really in to taking pictures right now! She took this of Shaun and I at the nativity activity. I didn't know Shaun was doing that to me! She thought it was pretty funny!

I can't wait to do this again next year! It probably was my favorite activity of the season so far!

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This picture pretty much sums up how I feel! We are all SO exhausted, and these next few weeks don't look like they'll let up! But we are making great family memories and traditions, and having fun while doing it!

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P.S. Gage has become quite the little cheeser!

This is his new cheesy smile when ever he sees the camera!

He does this eye squint thing, and he thinks it's so funny. . . but it doesn't make for the best picture!

***If you survived this post, props to you!***