1st Saturday of December

 I love December, I love Christmas, and I love everything about the busy-ness of the holidays! So on my first Saturday back from Utah I took the kids over to Home Depot for their gingerbread house making. They LOVED it. We spent almost two hours there hammering and painting. The kids did such an awesome job! I would just hammer the nail once to make it stick for Ruth and Will and they would hammer the rest. I hurried and made Molly's really quick so she could just sit there and paint forever. They had snacks and drinks for the kids to eat while the paint dried and then they put stickers on. It was a little madness to be there by myself with four kids (Sterling was on OB rotation and was on call and called in) but it worked out wonderfully and the kids were SO delighted with their creations.

I love how Will painted his ALL blue and Ruthie painted hers ALL pink and Molly's is ALL the colors---perfect description of their strong likes!

A very nice old man helped us out with everything, and he was so cute! I want to volunteer at Home Depot creations when I am old!

That smile. Wow.

That afternoon we had Thanksgiving dinner. I promised the kids when I flew to Utah that when I came back we would have Thanksgiving dinner. It was kind of crazy and hectic because I had no idea if Sterling would be around for sure, but he walked in right as we were sitting down, yay! I made a turkey (kind of, a small roast turkey because I didn't want that many leftovers), mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, jello with cream, corn, a pumpkin pie and a chocolate pie. Plenty of food for our little family! It was really great actually. It felt like I had flown in and we had all been all different directions throughout the week, so it felt really nice to pull all together and sit down for a delicious meal and talk about what we were thankful for.

 After Home Depot Christmas in the morning and Thanksgiving in the afternoon, we switched back to Christmas in the evening and went to our Stake Live Nativity. They had been announcing it for weeks but we had no idea HOW huge it was. We had wanted to participate, but knew that with Sterling's OB rotations he couldn't and I'd have to always have a sitter on hand just in case, and so it didn't really pan out this year. Maybe next? But the production was amazing--the stake choir was awesome, but they also had a high school choir sing at the beginning and they were INCREDIBLE. They are touring in Europe next year (does that even happen to high schools? Maybe they are a private school or something?) and of course, due to our demographics, they were pretty much all black and they sang these AMAZING gospel/soul numbers that just blew me away. It was such a delight and put me right into the Christmas spirit.

The live nativity outside was pretty amazing too. It reminded me a lot of the Town of Bethlehem walk that I've done at the Baptist church in Layton for the first four or so years of our marriage with Sterling's family. Only...we weren't freezing our toes off, so that was an upside. They had angels singing to greet you, and then they had a potter at the clay wheel and he let the little kids help him mold the clay, a basket-weaver that let the kids weave a couple strands, camels and sheep, a blacksmith, the shepherds, and a few other things. It was really nice. 

In the church they also had three rooms (the YW, RS, and Primary) set up with nativities. Hundreds and hundreds of them. And they were spectacular! One room was almost completely from one persons collections across the world and it was so neat. Anyway---I love that our stake got to be a part of this! And now the chapel has had all the garlands and Christmas wreaths up since then and it is just so gorgeous!

This pretty much captures Russ. He always has something stuffed into his mouth--and not lightly stuffed. Jammed in their as if he's trying to attack it. Haha.

 Sooooo much happiness from this little guy!