Christmas is my favorite holiday. I love the lights, I love the decorations, the colors, the music, the gift giving, the coziness (fireplaces, low lights, soft sweaters) and all the activities around remembering the birth and life of Jesus Christ.
The week before Christmas week we were still busy with school and tests and projects. I appreciate when the kids help one another, like Annabelle here helping Jane with her math (which I couldn't figure out how to do). I helped Nora with a Diorama she needed to complete for a WW2 report. 12-year-old Nora painted my nails with gel polish. Are they so cute and festive?
Charles said it didn't feel much like Christmas in Africa (hot, no Christmas trees, no lights everywhere etc), but they had zone conference the week before and all the missionaries were given Santa hats which was nice.
Pepa's been coming to the temple each week with Scott and I (and Elisabeth when she's available) which has been fun. So far she's been to Oquirrh, Jordan river and Draper temples.
We found this South Korean food place that sells lots of yummy things like Mochi donuts, boba smoothies, popcorn chicken in different flavors with fries, dipped corndogs and tongaluhu (what nora's holding; the fruit on a stick with a hard glaze).
We ended up making another couple of batches of Chex mix to give to neighbors/friends, and another batch of white chocolate candy cane pretzels. These are my favorite things to make (and eat) this time of year. Just playing my favorite game: Splendor.
Charles lives in an apartment with 4 elders. A couple of times now they've had 4 additional elders come stay the night before a Pday so that they can play sports together on Pday beginning early. Charles has gotten some good use out of his hammock. They hang it from the bars that are on the windows.
We ended up making another couple of batches of Chex mix to give to neighbors/friends, and another batch of white chocolate candy cane pretzels. These are my favorite things to make (and eat) this time of year.
Christmas Eve morning after a long walk/jog, I came home and did a Christmas yoga flow on Peloton. I love Peloton: their yoga classes, their strength classes(including core and pilates plus typical leg day/arm day/chest and back etc) and bootcamps and all of it; though what I use the most frequently is Yoga. I use Peloton a couple of times a week and then I also use the Kira Stokes fitness app once a week and CSE app about once a week. I also like to walk Penny daily, and then I jog a couple of times a week although lately I've had to take a break from jogging and do more speed walking on those days because of my right hip. I love being active and moving my body, I love seeing gains in strength and endurance.
Christmas Eve Scott worked the morning and came home at lunch time. I made lion house cinnamon roll dough while he was gone. We did our traditional family ice-skate at the Ice Ribbon with the Ludwigs.
We skate for an hour which is the perfect amount of time.
After skating we came home and finished up the cinnamon roll dough and put that in the fridge so it would be ready for Christmas morning. This LionHouse recipe makes 18 rolls.
Pepa, Lani and Spencer came over and watched The Greatest Christmas Pageant Ever with us on Amazon (it's still in theater but you can also buy it now, which is cheaper and in my opinion better than watching it the theater because it's cozier at home). We got Dominos Pizza for dinner and then afterwards we tried out a Christmas Candlelight service at a local church that we'd got a flyer for in the mail. It was cute; they read the Christmas story from the scriptures and had lots of music in between. We sang some of the songs too and at the end we all were given a candle (with a little circle of cardstock paper around the middle to catch the wax drips) and we lit them up and sang Silent Night. I'm not sure that we'd go to this particular one again although I liked the idea. And I liked that it was less than an hour. Maybe we'll try it at another church and see how that one is; or we might just do what we always do and that's do it on our own at home, reading the Christmas story and singing songs in between, and we have chimes for some of the songs which is fun.
Lani didn't come to the candlelight portion so once it was done I dropped Pepa and Spencer off at home and then we came back to the house and the girls exchanged their sibling gifts and then we let them open their pjs from us.
The girls all wanted to sleep down in the basement so we told them they had to be in bed by 10pm and not come up anymore so that Scott and I could get ready for Christmas morning.
Nora, Jane and Scott woke up first around 740(Scott a little earlier). They're allowed to open their stockings before the others are up so they did that. I got up at 8 and I took the girls to take care of our neighbors dog (they took care of her for 6 days) and then by 9am we woke up the other two girls and started opening gifts. The family gift this year was 2 electric GoTrax scooters (I got them for a great deal on Black Friday). It snowed some on Christmas Day which was fun. We love our cinnamon rolls.
I got these bracelets for Scott and myself. They're the colors of the Ghana flag.
Christmas Eve and Day we worked on and finished this puzzle; we'll need to get a new one for next year as this ones missing pieces. We had enchiladas, rice, beans and guacamole for dinner along with our traditional Pandoro cake that we order on Amazon. Pepa's family joined us for our Christmas story telling and chimes.
Friday after Christmas Tayson's family came up for a visit so we could all meet since they're getting pretty serious. We sure enjoyed our time with the Hepworth family; they're all great and we loved hanging out, playing games, going to a hockey game, stopping by the new tree of life display, and eating dinners together.
I didn't get any pictures of Nora's brunch, but Saturday morning she had 8 girlfriends over for a Christmas brunch. She organized the whole thing and had girls bring different foods to share (toppings for pancakes...Nora made the pancakes), juice, donuts, etc and we also made some Rhodes Rolls Cinnamon Rolls (didn't feel like doing the homemade ones again in the same week). They did a gift exchange and hung out for a couple of hours. I'm so grateful my kids have had such good friends over the years.
New Years Eve, Nora had invited some friends over, boys and girls, and they hung out in the basement. They were playing some game with the yoga ball where someone sits on the couch and the other person is holding the yoga ball and runs into the person sitting on the couch and then they push them off. Well the guys were getting pretty into it and someone got pushed really hard into the wall and it made a HUGE hole in the wall by our projector screen. Good thing Scott is handy and knows how to repair stuff. He and Nora will be starting to fix it on New Years Day. A couple of the parents offered to help pay or fix it which was kind.
