Christmas Preparations

The past few weeks have been busy with holiday preparations and no surprise, have a lot of accompanying pictures! Here is a condensed version of how we have been gearing up for Christmas!

Welcome Wally

We woke up on December 12th with a lot to do to start getting ready for Christmas! To our surprise, we were met by a house guest, Wally. Wally is our elf that Santa sends to keep an eye on Riley and Delaney. 

Christmas Tree

Since the Reed High football team was not selling Christmas trees this year, we had to find a new place to get our tree. Delaney and I had been doing some scouting when Riley was in school and found a Boy Scout troop that had a lot on Pyramid Highway, which is where we ultimately decided to go.

Decorating

Riley really got into decorating the tree! He went through all the ornaments while Daddy was hanging the lights on the tree and ended up putting most of them on the tree himself!The first ornament he chose to hang was Darth Vader, which Delaney really liked, followed by Yoda. Daddy helped hang the ones that needed to go higher up.

Delaney helped a little bit here and there, but would disappear to the play area for extended chunks of time to play with her new toys from her birthday.  

Family Ornament

We didn’t make it to the Candy Dance this year to get our ornament, but I was able to find a place online that had exactly what I had in mind!

Meeting Santa

Riley was very excited to meet Santa, until he got within two feet of him. He would not even look at him, let alone talk to him. Needless to say I had to be with him in order to get any sort of a picture. Delaney on the other hand was fine with the entire thing.

Ornaments

  We did our annual ornament making. This year’s was a little more involved, so we had to spread it over a few days. Both kids did their share!

Christmas Crafts

  Riley worked on a couple additional holiday crafts. He made cards for his teachers (school and swimming) and school friends. He also did some finger painting to compliment the paintings Delaney did over the summer.

Gingerbread Bunkers

I got this crazy idea to have the kids make gingerbread houses with graham crackers, the picture on the graham cracker box looked do cute! We went to the Peterson’s to do the project with Ramona, Tommy and a few of their cousins.   Besides the initial structural stability issues, things went well. While the six older kids each decorated their owns bunkers, Delaney played with their youngest cousin, who is practically her same age.Riley’s work of art.  

Gingerbread House

I had already bought our usual gingerbread house making kit before we planned to do the little houses with graham crackers, so we still made our family gingerbread house.  Our completed masterpiece from all angles.