December 2014 Happenings

I'm still working on catching up...

I decided to carry on another tradition with my new family. We drew names the beginning of the month. Then over the course of the month until Christmas we completed acts of service and left treats for the person whose name we drew. The kids really seemed excited to do this. Then on Christmas Eve we revealed who we had by giving them one final gift.

As a newly married couple we are continuing to learn the importance of communication.

We continued to add to our Christmas decorations which is fun to do together.

December 6th brought a visit from St. Nicholas. In addition, we were able to visit the German Christmas market at This is the Place Heritage Park as well as go to the Festival of Trees. It's nice to have so many fun Christmas events to attend.

On December 8th we met my family downtown to see Temple Lights for Family Home Evening.

On the 12th we took a drive to see Christmas lights with the kids.

We strung popcorn and cranberries for my first time.

On the 15th we sat at dinner and Alison mentioned how it was our two month anniversary. She even marked it on the calendar.

We had a nice Family Home Evening activity of our own of making gingerbread houses.

On December 16th we had another fun activity with my family of seeing Zoo Lights.

December 24th was great as I was able to introduce Joe and the kids to traditions with my family. We went to my parent's house for dinner and enjoyed our annual Christmas pajama party. Then I came home to play Santa for my first time as a parent. I think it came together well.

Christmas day was wonderful. We got up to have family Christmas fun before heading over to my parent's house. Then we went home to finish festivities. The rest of the day was filled with taking it easy and enjoying family time. It was a wonderful day. Michael made the comment, "Holy mother of a lot of stuff," when he saw his Santa gifts this morning, and the kids labeled it as the best Christmas ever.

We had some other fun family outings including dinner at Red Robin as well as seeing Night at the Museum 3.

One more family tradition I created was that we had breakfast for dinner on New Year's Eve which was fun.