December Fun Preparing for Christmas

Once Thanksgiving had come and gone, we started preparing for Christmas (and I finally let the kids start singing Christmas carols again!).  We got the tree put up and decorated.

The kids put on their special baby block ornaments first.

We were a little bottom heavy for a while, because there is only so high our little people can reach to put the ornaments on.

Beautiful tree with cute helpers.

Sarah's dance team had a fun cookie decorating party.

Trevor had safety day at swimming lessons and learned to swim wearing a big wet heavy sweatshirt!  Way to go, Trevor!

The next weekend, Austin's basketball team had a tournament and a team spaghetti dinner, then Sarah and I headed to St. Catherine's University to see the St. Paul Ballet's production of "Clara's Dream: From The Nutcracker".  Sarah's ballet teacher Nicole is in the St. Paul Ballet and performed in the show. Sarah was very excited to see her teacher on stage!

Photo op with Nicole, Sarah, and another dancer from Sarah's studio after the show.

Austin had another basketball tournament the next weekend, this time in Rockford (about 45 mins away).

In one of the games, Austin ended up guarding a VERY tall kid. Here is Austin facing off with him at the tip off.

And working really hard on defense.

Austin's team did a great job!  They won this game and ended up coming in 2nd place in the tournament. 

Next up was a week of Christmas concerts. First was Austin's band and choir concert on Tuesday evening.

Getting ready to play his saxophone in the band. 

Singing in the elementary school choir. (He's all the way on the left in the back row)

Trevor's preschool Christmas program was on Wednesday morning, and it was adorable, as usual!

Here is a link to watch the program: https://thecube.com/event/767112

They also made Santa hats at preschool, and Trevor has been having a blast wearing it up in the playroom with a sleigh he made out of playroom chairs, card board blocks, and toy strollers and shopping carts. He has been up there snapping the reins and shouting, "On Dasher, on Dancer, on Prance, and Vixen..."

Thursday evening, Sarah and Austin were in the Elementary Christmas Program. The program includes 2nd through 5th graders, so this was Austin's last year in it and Sarah's first year performing.

Here is Sarah with a bunch of her 2nd grade friends before the show.

Each grade performed 2-3 songs. Here is Austin singing with his class.

And Sarah with her class. 

Sarah was excited that she was chosen to play the bells for one of the songs.  Here, she and her dance teammate Adalyn are playing the bells.  We noticed that she and Adalyn were very in sync with each other and wondered if that was because they spend so much time together dancing!

Sarah's Godfather Brian would be proud (he is a percussionist). 

After each grade sings, the 5th graders act out the Nativity. Austin got to be one of the 3 kings, Melchior.  Here he is bringing gifts to baby Jesus.

The 5th grade Nativity! 

(with a real baby Jesus - the band director's new baby boy)

During the week, I made a couple batches of sugar cookie dough, rolled them into parchment paper, froze them, then got them out a few days later, cut slices and baked the cookies...so by Saturday, we were ready for Christmas cookie day!

 Getting ready for the decorating to begin!

Very serious about his sprinkles!

(Trevor was very excited that we had silver and gold sprinkles. He reminded us that there was a song about silver and gold in the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer movie.)

With just us doing cookies this year, I actually got to sit with the kids and help frost and decorate, since I wasn't in the kitchen whipping out batches of frosting the whole time.  We had a lot of fun together!

Christmas cookie selfie enjoying the cookies we made!

Look at all those delicious Christmas cookies!

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas..."

Trevor has been a little obsessed with the gingerbread man lately, so he really wanted to make gingerbread this year. Daddy got a gingerbread cookie mix and worked on rolling out the dough so Trevor and Sarah could use the cookie cutters to make fun Christmas shapes and gingerbread men!

Gingerbread boys and girls, and even a triceratops! Check out that expert icing by Daddy!

Licking the frosting covered beater is the best part!

Sarah is clever - she discovered there was a lot more frosting left in one of the bowls!  That's my girl!

 It was pajama week at dance that week.

Then on Saturday night after we had cookie day, Sarah had her dance studio's competition team sleepover.  All the competition girls were invited to the studio for a party and sleepover. The girls performed skits, performed their dances for all the other teams, had pizza and snacks, played games, made fleece blankets for the Children's Hospital, and exchanged socks stuffed with gifts!  So fun!  We are so happy to have a studio that does such fun things for our dancer!  Sarah stayed up until 2:30am and had a blast!

They're still little enough that we put 3 girls to each queen inflatable mattress and had the team set up in style!

Sarah's got her eyes closed, but here she is making a fleece blanket with Autumn, one of the seniors.

Wheelbarrow races

Sock gift exchange with her team

We picked her up at 8am on Sunday, got her home for an hour or so of sleep before we headed off to Church.  We had some quick lunch after that and then headed to Children's Theater Company to see "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas"!  What a fun weekend!

One more week until Christmas! The advent calendar is almost full, the kids are hoping to get on Santa's nice list, and our elf has been up to some mischief!