I am in two bookclubs, one with my old ward/neighborhood, half of which have since moved out of the neighborhood but are still close enough to do bookclub, and the other bookclub are with the women in my newer neighborhood. In both we do potluck dinners in late November or early December and we invite husbands and we discuss the latest general conference talks. I love this tradition. We had our old neighborhood bookclub dinner at Maren's home and we had our new neighbhorhood bookclub at my house. That was actually our first time doing that dinner bookclub with the new ward bookclub and I thought it went very well. There were 10 people who came to that one, we were missing one couple, and we had Cafe Rio style dinner. I love bookclub for a couple of reasons: 1) you get to read a book a month (or 2 books in my case since I'm in 2 bookclubs), many of which I wouldn't have read on my own, and 2) you get to strengthen friendships with those in the neighborhood and community just from meeting together monthly.
The little girls had their last day of school before Christmas break on Thursday the 20th and Elisabeth and Charles still had school Friday the 21st. Scott took off Christmas Eve and had Christmas day off and he took a couple of short days around the holiday. There is a new outdoor iceskating rink in our area so we went and did that a couple of times over break.
Saturday the 22nd, we hosted a Christmas Open House for families and invited neighbors. We had a ton of food, we made most of it, and we had lots leftover. Grandmas sugar made a couple of platters of Christmas cookies as well. Almost every night the week leading up to the open house, me, Scott and the kids would bake something in preparation: rolo and pretzels, sugar cookies, peppermint and chocolate fudge, peppermint popcorn, mint brownies, thumbprint cookies, etc. We also had chips and salsa, 7 layer dip, taquitos (big hit and the costco box we bought for this was gone very fast), veggies and hummus, and Elisa brought an avocado salsa and baked brie with apples.
We had people stopping in between 630-9pm, though actually it was closer to 10 before the last of the friends had left. Afterward we counted about how many people had dropped in over the night and it was about 75.
We pushed our table against the wall and had all the savory foods there. All the desserts were on the island. Everything was finger foods so we didn't have utensils, but we did have plates and napkins, cups and a big jug of water.
Downstairs in the basement we always had a movie going for the kids (they watched Frozen and something else...we had suggested the animated old Grinch movie but I don't know if they did that one), and they had a craft to make if they wanted (reindeer made from candy canes, glue dots for the red nose and googley eyes, and pipe cleaner for the antlers) and toys in the playroom. We blocked the door to the gym with the craft table because we didn't want kids going in there. The craft went fine though we're not sure if we needed it, so we may not do it again next year.
Sunday the 23rd, we only had one hour of church, just sacarament meeting, and the primary children sang "Stars were gleaming, Infant Holy", the first verse of each of those. Elisabeth, Scott and I also sang 2 songs with the choir. That night we pulled out our chimes and played a couple of Christmas songs which was fun.
Monday, Christmas Eve, the iceskating rink was open in the afternoon so we enjoyed a couple of hours there.
I got pretty good at doing spins! And all the kids were able to skate on their own, even Nora.
Christmas Eve the children did their Secret Santa Sibling Gift Exchange. Jane got Elisabeth a couple of pair of fuzzy socks (Elisabeth likes to wear fuzzy socks a lot these days and has a Fuzzy Sock Friday, at school with her friends).
Annabelle got Charles the board game Jumanji.
Elisabeth got Annabelle this pink hooded sweatshirt and a pack of gum.
Nora got Jane a case full of makeup.
And Charles got Nora a soft, crinkly unicorn. All the children did such a nice job searching for a gift that they thought their siblings would really like and everyone was happy.
Christmas Eve dinner we had Strombolli, and I was going to make Brie, pepper jelly and crackers for the Open House, but ran out of time so we made them for Christmas Eve dinner, and then again when we had a game night at our house a few days later with the Wilcox and Hansen family.
Scott got creative and made our strombolli into a couple of Wreaths.
It was very yummy!
Stacey and Mark stopped by that evening with gifts for the kids, and they all got fabric squares to tie their own blankets, so that night we watched The Elf, and tied blankets.
The kids went to bed by 10 and then Scott and I put out all the gifts and stockings...I had wrapped all the gifts the weeks leading up to Christmas, and we kept everything in our locked guest room that's downstairs. We always keep that room ready and locked so that it good to go when guests arrive, so it was the perfect gift-keeping room.
Christmas morning I finished the Book of Mormon and the Book of Mormon study guide! I had started to read the Book of Mormon with the study guide in January 2018, and was in the very beginning of Alma in October, when President Nelson issued the challenge to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year. The guide book is over 800 pages which is why this had been taking me so long. But I wanted to follow President Nelson's challenge, so I figured out how many pages of the Book of Mormon I needed to read each day to finish in time (4 pages, plus the pages from the guide...which took me about 40-45 minutes each morning) and then I did it! Elisabeth started again and also finished before the New Year! So proud of her! And Annabelle also recently finished reading the Book of Mormon, but she'd been plugging away at it for quite some time.
Christmas morning we had told kids we'd open gifts around 7am and that they could look at their stockings an hour before that. We used to say they can look at their stockings anytime that morning, but they'd get so excited that they'd wake up at 3 or 4am and then be up and playing and cranky. The schedule worked out really well this year. These three cute girls got matching dresses which we love!
The family got a few gifts: foosball table for the basement (our ping pong table broke at our family reunion over the summer), another Wii remote so that we have 4 total, the Wii game Mario Cart, some magnetic word strips, and the game Cover Your Assests (which the kids played before with Garnica cousins and LOVED).
Elisabeth and Charles both got Get Out Utah passes(which were on sale on black friday for $90), which means they get to do all sorts of activities during the next year...we got in on this with a few of their friends so together they can do the activities. We did a couple over the break including a nerf gun place (which they won't want to do again because it was more for little kids), and a rock climbing place. They're especially excited to go to Momentum climbing (another rock climbing place), High Jump, Funtopia, Lagoon and Cowabunga Bay. It's the gift that keeps on giving!
