Christmas Actvities

Here's what we've been doing to get in the Christmas Spirit.

Last weekend, Dale and I took all the kids and my parents to look at Christmas lights around the valley. We find all the crazy decked out houses from a map online and drive to all of them in the hopes of being amazed. And amazed we were. Just look at some of these.

This lady had several huge plexiglas cases full of Christmas village pieces. They were in her driveway, garage, and front porch. There must have been thousands. Holy crap.
And she had a SUPER CREEPY collection of animated robot dolls.
Then we went to a few others that were good but this one was particularly out of control. Every inch was covered with lights. The owners were showing Christmas movies in their driveway with a projector and they were serving popcorn and hot cocoa. Rex drank a whole cup of it so of course we had to make a pit stop about every 10 minutes.
The last place we went was a street called Upland Dr. in Chandler. Every house was done up to the nines.
So many people were there walking around, it was really a fun place to be. Here are Tabby and Rex telling "Santa" what they want for Christmas.
Then last Monday night, we decorated a tree for Family Home Evening. It wasn't just any tree. It was our pure tree. We talked about what the color white means in regards to Christ. We told the kids that red and green are the colors of Christmas but when it comes to the Christ child, the color of Christmas truly is white. So we made some white snowflakes and paper chains to put on our Pure tree. Do we not have snowflake skills?
Rex had his Preschool Christmas program and he was the cutest darn Rudolph you ever did see! How funny that he's wearing the same shirt that he has on in his ornament picture. Doesn't surprise me though, that's been his favorite shirt for quite some time now.
That same day, Tabby had "Polar Express" day at school. She was instructed to wear PJ's to school so they could be all cozy while they watched the movie and drank hot cocoa.
She was super fired up to wear her cupcake robe and her girls rock guitar slippers.

That night it was my turn to have some fun so I went (just me, yay!) to my mom's house to make some Christmas cookies. We were too lazy to make a bunch of different icing colors so we stuck with light blue because we thought we could make it accommodate any type of cookie cutter shape.
This guy is bummed cause of his runny foot.

Saturday night was our annual Porter (Dale's grandparents) Family Christmas Party. We are too big a family to fit in any body's house nowadays so we held it in a church this year. A house can get pretty claustrophobic with 85 people in it. That's how many showed up! And there were still a lot more who couldn't make it. I didn't take any pictures, dang it!

Another thing I didn't take pictures of was my kids in their Christmas church clothes. We were in such a hurry to get out the door and get there on time, it slipped my mind. And they looked so cute too! The girls had pastel colored glittery tu-tu skirts with glittery pink princess shoes. Oh, it was adorable. While we were getting ready, I started to feel bad because I didn't get anything for Rex to wear. When I said that Dale went back in Rex's room and fished out his tie he used to wear when he was a baby. I have to say it looked a little silly on him because the tie was extra mini (kinda like fat guy in a little coat) but Rex was really happy to be wearing something "special" so I left it on. I am straight kicking myself for not taking any pictures. No worries, I'll just dress them in the exact same thing next week and take pics then. No one will be the wiser!

And bringing up the rear in this marathon of a post, we went to see the Mesa Arizona Temple lights last night. It's not Christmas if you don't go see the lights! No earth-shattering lights photos here. Just a quick snapshot in between chasing kids.

Here we are all bundled up.
Ella looks so snuggly!
Who does Rex look like to you? You know, raccoon hat and bomber jacket? Any guesses?
That's right! Scut from A Christmas Story! I almost made him touch his tounge to this flagpole to see if it would stick to it.
Totally unintentional but hilarious!