Happy Christmas

It's Christmas Eve!
The boys put out reindeer food.

The tree is built.

The stockings are hung.

Time for dinner and finishing the day.

Christmas Eve 2016

After Jeremy hurt his arm yesterday, I knew I'd be able to LIGHTtheWORLD according to today's theme (I wish we didn't have to this way, but we do).  "Jesus cared for His loved ones and so can you."  Jeremy's limited in what he's able to do right now so some of our plans and traditions had and have to be changed a little.  Because of having a better attitude toward Christmas this year, it's not so bad.  It reminds me of How the Grinch Stole Christmas (by Dr. Seuss).  Even after the grinch stole all the Whos' toys and presents and food for their feast, Christmas still came.  It came without ribbons, it came without packages, boxes, and bags (paraphrasing here).  Jeremy told me he didn't know if he'd be able to wrap presents for me.  I told him that didn't matter.  He did manage to wrap presents by himself.  He even helped get a few things ready for dinner.  The kids all chipped in helping with dinner as well, from clearing and wiping down the table to peeling eggs and rinsing lettuce.  There was definitely service happening in our home today.
We had some visitors give us service as well.  We had a few people stop by to bring us Christmas gifts of various sorts, including a gift left on our doorstep.  It said, "Merry Christmas Telford's From the North Pole."  Thank you so much for the paperware and envelope.  It is greatly appreciated.  You know who you are.

I'm very grateful for all the kindness shown to us by so many people.  I'm very grateful for friends who came to give Jeremy a Priesthood blessing this morning, who took time away from their own Christmas Eve morning to perform that service for us.
This afternoon, Jr. Jr. got to sprinkle reindeer food out on the lawn.  He got it from school.  It had oats and glitter in it.  The package said, "Magic Reindeer Food  Sprinkle on the lawn at night, the moon will make it sparkle bright.  As Santa's reindeer fly and roam, this will guide them to your home."

We weren't able to have one of the dishes Jeremy was going to make for dinner.  Since we didn't have it for Thanksgiving, Jr. had his heart set on it for Christmas.  He had a very good attitude about it when we explained that Jeremy wasn't able to make it.  We still had plenty of food.

After dinner, Jeremy told the kids a special Jackerina (defender of the Telford family) story while I made snickerdoodles (thanks for the recipe, Kelly Quilter) so the kids could put out milk and cookies for Santa later.

Then the kids hung up our stockings by the fire and we had our last Countdown to Christmas scripture study and bore our testimonies.  Then we went around telling about ourselves for a video like we do every year. 

Then the kids got to open up presents from Grandma and Grandpa Telford (new pajamas) and put them on. 

 Aaaah!  My hair is on fire!

Then Jeremy and most of the kids went to bed while I tried to organize some music because the choir is singing in Sacrament Meeting tomorrow for Christmas and I'm the choir director.

Our 3-year old would not go to bed, so finally I went to bed for a little bit.  Eventually he went to bed and now I'm up again writing this blog post.
I told Jeremy, with his hurt arm in Sacrament Meeting tomorrow, it will be like Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol.  It will be good for people to remember on Christmas who made lame beggars walk and blind men see (paraphrasing again).
Merry Christmas.

Holidays and Exhaustion

I'm still just exhausted.  We've done a lot of celebrating lately, but when it comes time to blog about it, I'm just too tired.  I'd rather sleep.  So I haven't been blogging.
I'm already tired tonight, but I'm going to do a little catching up anyway.  Some of our recent celebrations:
December 11 was International Mountain Day.  Since it occurred during Hannukah, we had a "mountain" of latkes then played Dreidel.  Lucky does pretty well at spinning the dreidel so he enjoyed his first time playing.

December 13 was Cocoa Day so the kids got hot chocolate after church.  I didn't get around to getting a picture of that.  But we've got plenty of hot chocolate pictures on this blog already.


We also celebrated Lucky's birthday recently.  He was really good at blowing out his candles.  I had to light them three times so we could get a decent picture of him blowing them out.  He didn't complain, though.  He was happy to blow them out each time I lit them, and thought it was fun.

Then today, December 16, is National Chocolate Covered Anything Day.  So we made our annual trip to the Holiday Lights at Thanksgiving Point.  We did stop by the Water Tower Plaza this year to visit the reindeer and warm ourselves by the fire.  I asked Jeremy to make us balloon hats to wear. 
Balloons.  It's kind of our thing, you know?

When we got home we had donuts and hot chocolate.  Some of the donuts were chocolate covered.  And some of the donuts we dipped in our hot chocolate to make them chocolate covered.  Yumm.

Continuing Celebrations

Last year when we drove through the holiday lights at Thanksgiving Point, we went to the Water Tower Plaza afterwards to see the reindeer and warm ourselves by the fires.  Lucky wasn't able to see anything last year due to the fact that he wasn't born yet.
This year when we went to see the lights, it was so crowded getting to the lights that we didn't even try to go to the Plaza afterward. 

So today was our day to go see the reindeer... in the afternoon.  

Hey, I thought you said there would be flying reindeer.

There were a lot of people there to see Santa, but since our kids got to sit on Santa's lap twice already this season (at our ward Christmas party and at Riverwoods), we didn't bother standing in line for that.  The kids were more interested in standing by the fire anyway.

Last year it was sooooooo cold that night.  This year this afternoon was a different kind of cold.  It was drizzly so it was a wet cold instead of a freezing cold.


This evening we continued with Hanukkah celebrations and played Dreidel.  My dreidel kept landing on "Gimel" which meant I got to keep taking the chocolate coins from the center.  I had a LOT.  But we just do it for fun, so everybody got to eat a chocolate coin at the end of our game.

Last night, Lucky slept through us eating latkes so tonight Jeremy made some more so Lucky could eat some.  He enjoyed them, too.

It's been fun continuing with our celebrations for the season.  And it's especially fun to celebrate as a family.

Lots of Celebrating

Today, December 4, was National Cookie Day.  I didn't have time to make cookies.  Jr. Jr. wanted to hang a picture on the wall so I drew a cookie (circle) for him to decorate, which he did then got to hang it on the wall.  He was quite happy about that.

This afternoon we had our annual Polar Express party.  We watched the movie, had dinner, clementines, hot chocolate, and popcorn.  To go along with tradition, Jr. spent time reading while the movie was on.  We'll read the book, The Polar Express, some time closer to Christmas.

This evening/night, we went to Thanksgiving Point to drive through their holiday lights displays.  I remember plenty of times driving by on the freeway and seeing the holiday lights from a distance at Thanksgiving Point, but this was the first time I actually went to see the lights.
Jr. Jr. fell asleep on the way, but he loves looking at Christmas lights and we didn't want him to miss it, so we were finally able to wake him up so he could enjoy the lights with the rest of us.  We all enjoyed it.

After driving out of the main holiday light displays, they had a straight stretch with posters set up with pictures and words from "The Nativity Song," a Primary song I remember learning as a child.  I thought that was so great.  After the festive lights, bringing it back to what Christmas is really about.  At the end of the posters, they had a nativity scene set up.  Jeremy and the kids noticed icicles hanging from Mary's forehead and a few of the animals.  We've had that weather lately.

After driving through the displays, we went to the plaza to see ice sculptures, reindeer, and warm ourselves by the fires.  It was so cold but so pleasant.

We had a happy day celebrating as a family.