Christmas Eve

Last year after Christmas we found a clearanced Santa suit for my dad so he brought all the kids their Christmas jammies on Christmas Eve this year. Since the oldest cousin is only 5 they were more in shock than excited, but after he left they really perked up and decided it was awesome. The first thing Molly told me was that she "wasn't even scared when Santa came!" She is notoriously anti-Santa so this was a big step for her.

We tried to get the kids to sinc Christmas songs all together so they could be in one place when Santa came. As expected, it was a little rough.





The best picture we could get of the self-named "snow fairies." This year's jammies were pretty awesome!

Christmas at the Cabin

This year we spent the 23rd and part of Christmas Eve up at the cabin. There was a ton of snow and the kids loved it.

We don't own any snow clothes so this is the best we could come up with.

The Clark's Rockin' Christmas Party

Every year my sister has an annual Christmas party, with the highlights being absolutely incredible food and a White Elephant exchange. This year the she added a Nativity for the kids and made some pretty amazing costumes for it.



Claire was a shepherd - and surprisingly a very good sport about it! I think she was the only kid not spending the majority of the time trying to figure out how to get the costume off.


Molly was Mary and Colin was Joseph, although she told me at one point that she wished Max was Joseph. Sorry Colin! And Chris was the only adult invited to participate - as the donkey Mary rode in to Bethlehem.





The best White Elephant gift (I suppose the opinion is biased - I'm the one that gave it) was a game called Mazu Kan. You put on special gloves and a thing on your chest so you can have a pretend fight. It tracks your movements so you can do special moves and block punches. My dad and Chris had the first fight with Chris winning, but Mike was the night's overall champion.






There's a chance this video will have to be removed when Chris or my dad see I posted it, but it is too funny not to post! I thought my aunts Holly and Karen may especially enjoy it...

Nutcracker

This year my mom took my sisters and I plus the oldest granddaughters, Molly and Amelia, to the Nutcracker put on by Ballet Arizona. It was absolutely spectacular! We started our afternoon at Ms. Thomas Lovely's Teahouse for lunch then on to the ballet. Molly got a little bored when it got close to intermission, but luckily it was nothing a drink and a potty break couldn't fix.

Jessie told the girls to pose looking very polite and they both ended up doing this odd, prayer-like thing.

Preschool Christmas Pageant

The preschool Molly goes to has separate classes for the three year-olds and the four year-olds, and normally only the four year-old class gets to put on the Christmas pageant. but this year they were a little short on class members so Molly's class got to participate too. I have to admit when Molly was cast as a wiseman I was a little disappointed at first (thinking she obviously should have been an angel) but after I saw the costume I realized how wrong I was! The hat was quite amazing. She and Max were darling and they did a great job. There was only one minor slip-up when Molly forgot when it was her time to go on stage, and was paying so little attention that her teacher was practically shouting at her before she realized it was time to go on.