Yup, a quick overview of a month already well blogged… December…

Advent fun…

Chinchilla….

YMCA time…

R.I.P.P.E.D

Night out with Chris and Renee to see a play!!

Pre show Mystro time

A Christmas Carol

More Chinchilla…

So serious

Taught Gavin how to clean the cage.

Crafting with Gavin…

He made all of our cards!

Crafting period…

These are my final finish of the year and are an adorable set from the designer Knot Bad.

Neko-Chan is such a sweet model

Knot Bad rocks!

The arrival of a lovely fruit box from Grandma and Grandpa Reinsch…

Baking…

The twins made cookies as a present we mailed off!

Monster cookies

A somewhat surprise visit from Nana and Baba…

And just plain old fun!

Cousin Robbie visited and mentioned never having had a scarf… well that problem was quickly solved!

Opening presents with Aunty Holly and Cousin Jimmie

Don’t forget school time, we kept up a pretty good pace considering the amount of excitement. Lots of opportunity to learn as we researched some origins of our favorite carols.

We made crystals!

A handmade Christmas card

By Emanuel

Chinese for New Years…

If you want to see the already blogged activities.. here you are…

1. Anoka Lights
2. Santa Visits
3. Christmas Pageant

So now that I have posted this WAY out of order (what with the blog back log), here’s hoping I can catch myself up before mid 2018!!!! Wish me luck!!!

We braved the insanity of Mall of America right after Christmas… someone asked for a gift card from Santa this year.

She stood in line so long that some Christmas money made its way to the purchase.

Dungeon and Dragons with Dad!

Gavin asked for an item with sequins…

Doing Home Depot at home

Woo! New year, new start, keeping up… not bad not bad. I don’t do resolutions, just gradually change my patterns. So here’s hoping.

Anyway… December, last month… well… Christmas, of course. Winter, some snow (sort of), busy busy. But now for the actual details of the month…

We had our traditional paper chain countdown, perler bead Advent chart AND of course, went to Activity Village for their Advent fun. Just a warning – they have gone to membership now, it is a reasonable cost and I have already signed up.

Early on in the month Shandai and I gave it a go at a Vendor sale and set up a table of my crochet and her knitting pieces. It wasn’t a huge success but it was fun! And hopefully something we can do again!

A pretty view out the back of the building

We did all sorts of fun crafts at home and at Daycare.

You really can make any picture Christmas-y

Practiced our recorders.

Christmas with the Schwartz family is a yearly much looked forward to tradition. Of course we decorated our small gingerbread houses.

This is mine, you can see the rest on the overflow post HERE.

Opened presents and had so much fun.

Look what the boys got!

Ken and I took the girls to Jeffrey’s Christmas concert. We had Christmas with the Novaks on Christmas Eve. It was so much fun and we were there way past bedtime.

We found Anthony a stuffed appendix and made him up the certificate! He loved it!

Of course we had our Sunday School Christmas pageant. The Schwartz family came to watch.

We had a whole family of angels.

We also had dinner out at McDonald’s to celebrate.

We saw Santa a SECOND time (the first was at Macy’s with Nana and Baba HERE) at the YMCA. There was all sorts of fun to be had there. 

We had our monthly Bookit reading program pizza.

And made cookies. This year we tried out a new gingerbread recipe from the Activity Village site HERE.

Monster Cookies

We had some lovely mail come. 

Seriously WHO SENT THESE?

And spent plenty of time at the YMCA.

Gavin

Little Lotus Yoga pose

It was a jolly Christmas. Full of fun and friends and gifts and giving.

From Ken to me

I got these lovely puzzle pieces for Ken.

We took full advantage of our new fryer and made FRESH poutine!

We even made it to one of Anthony’s indoor soccer games.

Skyping family!

For New Years we spent the night at home with a lovely drop by last minute by the Schwartz family for an hour or two.

Yup quite the month!!! I hope you enjoyed the wander through images!

December 20-22

Our last weekend before Christmas had us with one more day of “real” school. AND seeing that Saturday was the first day of winter, a return of more snow and some cooler temperatures.

In our Gammie packages there was a craft kit so how better to end the last full week before Christmas than to get to work making Santas? And when we ran out of beards… elves.

More books of course.

We greatly enjoyed our read by Gammie story!

And then Ken and Nana executed Trinity and my idea of a box puppet house. Activity Village (link on right) put up a previous Advent’s printable Christmas people pages and so we printed those out and put them on popsicle sticks for our puppets. Supplemented by any finger puppets we found laying around.

Ken had registered the kids for a special Christmas Home Depot craft – snowmen made out of paving stones. VERY cute!!!

Sunday was the last scheduled Sunday School session until after the New Year. Miss Trinity wore last year’s finery and looked absolutely adorable. Our family and only a handful more kids were there but they had a blast. And came home with chocolate for all.

We rounded off our morning with cookie making and decorating! So many sweets in the house right now!

There was a reason for the last minute icing. Our afternoon/evening Sunday was our Novak/Reinsch-Johnson Christmas gathering over at the Novak’s. Talk about excitement and chaos… it was PERFECT! We had supper and snacks (oh the variety of snacks including our cookies) and games and visiting. Definitely an amazing way to spend Christmas with friends who are so much more than just friends. Chosen family!

We were there super late and drove home in somewhat nasty weather with kids who were full of Christmas cheer and exhaustion. Now enjoy the rest of the party pictures!!!

Christmas colouring

More present opening

Alex the musician

DINNER

Godson and I

Action hair

Fishing for words

Hanging out

A room of artists

The first 3 were made by me, I am not sure where Aidan’s is (I think he keeps it in his room) but I have cross stitched stockings for all the Novak boys.