Christmas Countdown Continued!

Last year, I vowed to take the holiday craziness down a notch and simplify things as much as I could, so as not to be all Grinchy from sheer exhaustion by the time Christmas rolled around. We've still packed in tons of activity this month, but I started our shopping right after Halloween and did most of it online, so that definitely helped! We had to skip my school's pancake breakfast with Santa (the girls had fevers and sore throats), never got around to riding the Christmas train or checking out the zoo's holiday festivities, and don't have any Christmas decorations outside this year (Bear doesn't often get home before dark and has been sick for the past week or two, too), but whatever--we've still managed to have plenty of fun!

Last Tuesday, Bear and I got all fancied up for his company's Christmas party:


On Saturday, we hosted the Christmas play date I've been wanting to have for the past three years. It's a crazy time of year for everyone, and I only gave two weeks' notice, so most of our friends were busy...but three families came, and that turned out to be a perfect number of kids!

I had all kinds of grand ideas for fancy treats to make, games to play, and activities for the kids to do, but after having a pancake breakfast and all-day holiday extravaganza for my 31 students the morning before, I opted to, again, keep it simple. They decorated milk carton gingerbread houses...




...and made some foam photo ornaments, and then got their wiggles out in the playroom. I'd asked everyone to bring food donations to make a basket for a needy family, so we piled it all on a table in our entryway, and then took a group photo of the kids to include on a card for the family. How cute are these children?!


On Tuesday night, our friends surprised the girls with a PJ Run, which is a tradition they introduced us to last year. The idea is that the parents secretly arrange for one family to charge into the other family's house near bedtime, banging pots and pants and chanting "PJ Run! PJ Run!" (and hopefully not scaring the daylights out of the young "victims"!). Then everyone goes out for ice cream in their pajamas (parents included), cruising around to look at Christmas lights along the way. Here are five of the six kids at McDonald's, showing off their sugar highs:


Instead of baking goodies for our coworkers (which inevitably results in a frantic, late-night cookie-thon that almost...almost...makes me like cookies a teeny bit less), I went back to my old tradition of baking for the fun of it while watching You've Got Mail one afternoon--no deadline or quotas to meet. (Hey, You've Got Mail is just as much a Christmas movie as Die Hard. Shush.) The girls pitched in with some of the baking again this year, which is a tradition I can remember doing with my grandma from when I was their age. Here they are sporting the adorable matching aprons my grandma's friend made for us (I have one, too!):


Another tradition we try to keep up is taking photos with Santa at the Festival of Lights--it's the same Santa every year, and he's a really good one! We didn't get one when Keira was a baby, but here's her first one at one year old. Clearly, she did not share my view of Santa.


The next two years, Kiwi declined to sit on Santa's lap, so we got no pic in 2008. In 2009, it was just 8-month-old Ellie. I think these two photos perfectly illustrate the difference in the girls' personalities! (That's not to say that Keira isn't all kinds of fun and adorable, but it's in her nature to be anxious about new things, and in Ellie's to be all, "Woohoo!" no matter what's going on.)


Last year, we got both girls in the picture--hooray! Check out Ellie's reverse mullet: business in the back, party in the front!


And here's this year's picture, with Keira displaying the Shoulder Raise she sports in most of her 2011 photos (love it):


I tried to get a good photo of the girls with Cousin Brandon afterward, but Ells was a blur in most of them and Keira was apparently too cold to smile:


Keira and I went to Moms' Morning at preschool last Wednesday, where they have different crafts in every classroom. She and I made some cute ornaments and took a mother-daughter photo together (can't wait to get that back!) before we scurried off to the movies to see Arthur Christmas with Bear and Ellie!


The girls made some more ornaments at home yesterday, which involved busting out the glue and glitter--yippee!



And last night, we finally made it to the temple's Bring Your Menorah service that I've been meaning to take the girls to for a few years now. Bear was still under the weather, and the girls and I were still in jammies at dinnertime after a long day of at-home potty training adventures with Ellie (more on that later), so I was tempted to just stay home...but I put on the BGP's (Big-Girl Panties)--both mine and Ellie's--and got the girls and myself out the door just in time to scurry in at the last minute. If Bear's sister hadn't saved us seats, we would've been on the floor--it was packed! Although the two-hour service was a bit long for the girls, they enjoyed the music (Ellie did some interesting dance moves in my lap) and we got to light our menorah along with dozens upon dozens of other ones. Is this beautiful, or what?


Looking through all of these photos, it sure doesn't seem like we've taken it easy this month, but it has definitely felt more fun and less frantic than last year did. I think lowering my expectations and being just a little less ambitious in our plans has made a big difference!

Now it's time to get ready for Santa's visit tonight. I took this photo just a few minutes ago...I like to call it "Anticipation."


Merry Christmas!