Dec. 7, 2010

Saturday was a busy day. Drayton and Presely and Isabella had slept over the night before. I had to take Maiya to a friends b-day party. She got to go to Chuck E Cheese, and had a blast. Then I took Damian to gymnastics for his last class until January. He got his badge. He's been doing so well. Then I had to go pick up Kaitlyn from her friend, Averys sleepover.
For the advent calendar we decorated sugar cookies. I hate making sugar cookies because they take so long and never seem to work out well for me, so my friend Megan (who sells her baking) made me 2 dozen sugar cookies that I bought off of her for the kids to decorate.

When Grant got home we got ready to go to our ward Christmas Party. It was a turkey dinner. I believe there was supposed to be a small program as well, but we could only stay for the dinner (so yummy, and the kids had fun). Then we had to go home and get the kids ready for bed. Kaitlyn and McKenna babysat while Grant and I went to the Kyles house for an adult Christmas Party.

Lots of yummy food, great friends and fun games. I love Christmas. Always lots of fun.
Along with this time of year also comes sickness. We came home to Tyson vomitting. Catcher and Maiya had been sick for 1 day each during the week. Then on Sunday Damian and Kaitlyn woke up sick and vomitting. Grant was up a lot in the night cleaning so the house didn't smell like vomit and so it was cleaned up for when I woke up (what an awesome and thoughtful husband). We didn't end up going to church. For our advent on Sunday we decorated our tree, and had our special layout of treats. Poor Kaitlyn and Damian couldn't really enjoy it because they were feeling so awful, but they watched us decorate and put up their own ornaments. One of our traditions is to get each child a christmas ornament that they pick out from the Hallmark catalogue. It's fun to see what they pick, and I think it will be a good trip down memory lane for them to look at them when they are older (like, I remember when I was into that). Here are the ornaments they picked this year

Damian - Indiana Jones, Catcher - Ironman
Kaitlyn - Harry Potter, Tyson - Spiderman
McKenna - Alice in Wonderland
Maiya - Barbie.

The tree always makes Christmas feel official. We were going to watch the First Presidency message on tv, but we couldn't find it. So we had a family home evening lesson instead.
Monday was my day for feeling ill. I did not go as far as vomitting, but I was exhausted all day and could barely keep my eyes open. McKenna also was sick. I fell alseep at 6pm while the kids were watching a movie, woke up at 7pm and then went back to bed at 9:30pm. Our advent was supposed to be toboganning, but we decided to do it on a different day because of feeling so yucky.
Today (Tuesday) I woke up feeling 100 percent better. I also woke up to a thoughtful gift from Grant. I have been saying that I want to get a nice nativity at some point, but every year goes by and I don't buy one. He left one out displayed for me this morning, and I love it.

 After we took Maiya to school,Grant and Tyson and I went to the mall to shop. Just a few last minute gifts. Grant started feeling pretty ill while we were there, and was full blown sick by the time we got home. I took McKenna to kickboxing and then when I got home I got the kids ready to go out to the Festival of Lights (that was our advent activity today). The weather was pretty decent, so it was good timing. The kids got to decorate cookies in the kids tent, we walked around to look at the lights and they "skated" on the pond. (We didn't bring skates, so I should probably say that they slid around on their boots on the pond).