Christmas traditions

I think I posted a blog with that exact same title last year at this same time. . . another tradition I guess. We have had a busy and fairly productive week and weekend. After getting home it's always some effort to getting things into feeling like normal and this time was even harder because we had preschool at our house this week. The unit we're doing right now is so great for Christmas time, it's about the Joy of Sharing and Service. The kids totally are getting into it, we did service charts where they got to put stickers on the chart when they did things for someone else and it was a hit! Darby is still asking if she can do me any service so she can put on a sticker, she would say "I served that!" Very cute. We also made a trip to the food bank which was actually a first for me and was really neat to see how they have things set up. We are doing a Christmas program for a retirement community and selling homemade gingerbread houses and buying gifts for a needy family . . .phew! It is so fun though to see the kids really enjoying doing this stuff for other people. It's helped remind me how much fun you can have doing stuff like that. I love Christmas!

It's cold and snowy here and I mean cold with a capital COLD! Perfect time to head into the mountains and grab a Christmas tree right? That's what we did yesterday morning and in true traditional fashion, everything went great, we got a great tree, and Darby had a major tantrum. . .oh. . my. . god! Erich and I were both at boiling points we had not experienced before. It was 5 degrees out and we were going out to stomp around in the snow for at least an hour and Darby was screaming about putting on her snow pants, her ski boots, her layers under her coat, and then her coat . . .sigh . . .she finally got everything on and we all ended up having a great time in the beautiful forest with tons of snow and sunshine. It actually didn't feel like 5 degrees but I was glad to get back in the car and head home :)

Erich got the tree up and then we headed out for the Bozeman Christmas Stroll where Santa goes down main street and lights up all the decorations! We barely made it in time to see Santa and again it was because Darby is crazy and thinks she doesn't need to wear clothes to keep warm. Poor girl was so stubborn about putting on her warm clothes that she was shivering from head to foot and falling into a frostbite coma before she finally consented to put on her snowpants and zip up her coat. We went to dinner with some friends and then Erich went to the Bobcat basketball game with our friend Greg and his wife Kara and I hung out with the kids until 10:00! The kids did surprisingly well but both crashed out when we got home and slept until 10 am this morning! Awesome! Anyways, we're doing decorations tonight so that should be fun, but here are some pictures from our outing yesterday.

Christmas Tree