Christmas Eve Festivities

I love, love Christmas Eve at my parent's house!  We have a talent show, and do the nativity, and Santa comes, and we eat a bunch of junk food and open crazy presents.  

The afternoon of Christmas Eve, Dan, Atticus, and I went to the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake to see their Children's Choir Concert.  It was so beautiful and perfect!  I loved every second of it and Atticus was very good.  I'm excited to go again next year.  This is after the concert. 

 After the concert we headed to my parent's house for food and fun.  My dad decided to revamp the nativity play this year.  He wrote up a script with a few speaking parts and made everyone have a part, including himself, my mother, and my niece Anna who Skyped in.  (My brother Jonathan, his wife Jen, and their two kids Anna and Jonah had to stay in Denver this year as their daughter Mary was born two days after Christmas.)  (Oh and Anna played the prophetess Anna.)  Dan was Simeon.

 Cutest Shepard ever.

We were wise men and there's another not-so-excited wise man back there on the piano bench.

These two were less than enthused.

 Psych the Innkeeper.

 This is Brad.  He was playing Nephi praying for a sign.  I told you my dad really went overboard with it.

 Mary and Joseph.

 He did not want to go see the Christ Child.

 Talent time.  This is Tate.  He's in 7th grade.

This is Jimmy holding Anna for her talent. 

 These two performed an original dance that Atticus decided to join in on.

My mom announced each performance.  We are super cool like that.  Atticus thought this microphone was the greatest. 

I'm not sure I remember what Jersi's talent was.  But this was involved. 

This is Atticus performing his talent.  Please ignore my singing.  He's obsessed with this song.  He usually sings the word at the end of each line.

 This is the least attractive picture ever but our talent was hard.  We performed The Nations of the World by Yakko Warner.  You may watch on Youtube if you want.  Clearly we are awesome.

 Jonathan and Jen.

 Atticus' bus from Grandma and Grandpa.  He has this weird love of buses.  This was definitely a hit.

 Kyndi's photobomb.

 Stefanie got Atticus this obnoxious Grover phone that he constantly plays with.

 Jimmy is a new word in Atticus' vocabulary and it is super.

Santa came!
 This is usually Kamron's least favorite moment of the year, so he switched it up.

 He loved Santa all month and would get excited to see him, until this happened.  He was slightly intrigued by the present though.  Now when I ask him about Santa, he tells me what Santa says and then tells me "I sad on Santa".

 I sure like my parents.  

 This is his new "Elmo" book.  It's really cute and Atticus makes us read it at least once a day and he does all the actions.

 Made it home from Grandma's house.

December Happenings

We had so much fun with Atticus this Christmas.  He's still too little to understand what was going on with the holiday but he recognized Baby Jesus and Santa and was excited about both of them.

We got a new artificial tree this year and my decoration skills are very lacking.  So it's a work in progress.  Atticus worked very hard to put hooks on the ornaments.

 He picked out his own motorcycle ornament for the tree 

 Atticus loved the tree.  He loved plugging in the lights at night and informing us the lights were hot.  He loved talking about all the colors on the tree.  He loved walking around and around the tree and pointing out which presents belonged to each of us.  And he loved lying beneath the tree (A child after my own heart.)

He also had his own tree which kept him from ripping ornaments off of the actual tree.

 We got a ton of snow in December.  I think this picture was actually taken in November.  But Atticus loves to help shovel and by the time Christmas came around we had over a foot of snow on the ground.

 We have a bunch of Christmas movies but almost everyday Atticus would beg to watch "Ginch"

 He loved talking about Santa.  This particular day he wore his Santa hat all day and would tell me over and over, "I Santa.  Ho, ho,ho!".

This was at Thanksgiving Point.  We went there to get his picture taken and then he loved seeing the Reindeer.

 Jennifer was in town for a bit with her little Laila.  I definitely trained him to say Laila and Juju before we went to see them.  And we, like always, forced them to be best friends.  They are, I think, 7 days apart.  That Laila is one cute little thing.  I wish they lived closer.  Or even in Utah would be good.

 

 We took the kid to Temple Square and it was one of the more miserable experiences ever.  At least the getting to and from was.  We decided to take the train from my parent's house and someone in my family who will remain nameless... looked up prices and times for us.  This person was wrong on both accounts.  We got there and bought tickets which were more than we were expecting only to learn that, because it was Saturday, the train would not be there for another 45 minutes after we thought it would.  It was freezing and we'd already bought tickets so we sat in the car until the train was coming.  Atticus loved standing on the platform watching the train both coming and going.  And he enjoyed the actual train ride as well.  Temple Square was super crowded and we didn't stay long as it was horribly cold but I'm glad we got to go.  It was our second attempt to get down that way this December and only the second time we've made it there for Christmas since we got married.  Oh and the way home was even worse.  We took trax to to front runner and barely missed it.  So we had to wait in the bitter cold for an hour.  We passed the time in the elevator to try and stay warm.  Atticus didn't seem to mind too much but Dan and I sure were whining.  And the kid was up way past bedtime.

We went for "gingerbread" trees instead of houses. They were on display for like a week and Atticus loved pointing out whose was whose.

While Atticus did both his and helped with mine, by smearing and dumping treats all over them.  Dan was very preoccupied with making his tree look realistic and beautiful. 

Can you see the sprinkles just pouring out of his shaker? 

 This is Atticus' final product.

And this is Dan's.  Mine looked more like Atticus'. 

Checking out his reflection in my lens. 

 So pleased with himself.

 I dressed for the occasion.

Atticus helped me make sugar cookies for Santa.  I made like 5 dozen so we took most of them to the people working at the ER on Christmas.

"Cheese!"