Christmas Meme

I was tagged by Jenny for this fun Christmas meme. If you'd like to do it too consider yourself tagged!:)

1. Eggnog or hot chocolate?
hot chocolate with whipped cream (not marshmallows)

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
Mrs. Claus tries to wrap all the presents, but sometimes they are too weirdly shaped, so those go under as is.

3. Colored lights on the tree/house or white?
Well we have a fake pre-lit tree and it has white lights though I think I'd prefer colored.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?
I don't, but my parents do and Adrian and my first kiss was under their mistletoe.:)

5. When do you put your Christmas decorations up?
Oh hopefully the Monday after Thanksgiving - we try to do it as a Family Home Evening activity each year.

6. Favorite holiday dish?
Finnish Ribbon Cookies and my brother-in-law, David's, 7 layer dip (SO good)

7. Favorite holiday memory as a child?
Park City Christmases when I was young (my family had a time share there once upon a time). And especially decorating a Christmas tree in our Park City condo with makeshift ornaments and popcorn strings. One year the popcorn was cheddar flavored! And if I remember right that was also the year that my sisters had a huge argument whilst string popcorn and my sister Lori stabbed my sister Julie in the wrist with her popcorn stringing needle. Oh the memories.

8. When did you learn the truth about Santa?
I can't remember what age I was exactly (probably 8 or 9), but when I figured him out I figured out everyone (Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy...) it was a bad day.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
Yes, one, and its usually pajamas.

10. How do you decorate a tree?
We have an assortment of hand-made by kids ornaments, bear ornaments (as you are aware, I have a bear thing), and a white star on top of the tree. I love our hodge-podge tree.

11. Snow! Love it or dread it?
Okay, so I love to look at it and if I have no where to go I love the quiet stillness that goes along with a good snow storm. BUT I hate driving in it.

12. Can you ice skate?
Nope. Well I can, but not very well.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
I was pretty darn excited about that Cabbage Patch Kid when I was 7.

14. What is the most important thing about the holidays to you?
Celebrating the birth of our Savior and spending time with family.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
Love doing puzzles during Christmas time with the kids, making Finnish Ribbon Cookies, and watching Christmas movies.

17. What tops your tree?
A white star

18. Which do you prefer-Giving or Receiving?
giving (I don't mean to sound goody-goody, but I really don't even think about gifts for me or even Adrian - sorry honey - to me it's all about the kids at Christmas.)

19. Favorite Christmas song?
O Holy Night, What Child is This, The Wexford Carol

20. Candy Canes-Yuck or Yum?
Yuck to the peppermint ones, yum to the tuity-fruity :)

21. Favorite Christmas show?

A Christmas Story (a favorite from my childhood and "fra-geee-lay" still makes me laugh so hard, oh and the Christmas dinner at the Chinese restaurant!)

Elf (HA!)

Nightmare Before Christmas (yes, it's a double holiday fave in our house)

A Christmas Carol (I like the one with Patrick Stewart and Scrooged with Bill Murray)

A Year Without Santa ("I'm Mr. Heat Miser, I'm Mr. Sun. I'm Mr. Green Christmas, I'm Mr. 101"!!)

22. Saddest Christmas song?
Christmas Shoes - HA! Just kidding! Seriously I HATE that song. No really, it's The Little Drummer Boy that always makes me misty (though it's not that sad just touching)

Flashback Friday

I've just spent a long time looking at old pictures on my computer and this one inspired a flashback post. There are lots of things I miss about living on the East coast and this is just one of many.
Squirrel Olympics! That's what we used to call the antics of the squirrels in our backyard. Once the trees lost all their leaves it was so fun to watch the squirrels scurrying all over in the trees, jumping from shaky limb to shaky limb, and even hanging upside down as pictured. The kids especially loved the spectacle and it was fun to see them glued to the windows laughing hysterically. I miss that. Now we have bunnies and prairie dogs, but I think we'll all always have warm feelings for squirrels. Okay, correction, Adrian just informed me he does not actually have warm feelings for squirrels. They always got in our garbage in MD and made a mess for him to clean up. But the other 4 of us in the family still miss squirrels.:)

1 Day. 3 Class Parties. Whew.

Today was the day of class parties and I got to all of them. The best part was seeing my kids smile when I walked into their class. Real heart melting smiles. For me. Ben gave me a big hug and kept saying all day how happy he was that I came to his party. Man, these kids know how to make me feel good! (Moments to remember over the next few weeks when I'm going crazy with them all home!)

First was Ben's party were I got to help him make a ginger-bread house. He was so into it!

Second was Nina's party at preschool and Stacey had the cutest activities and crafts for them. They had a book exchange, decorated ice cream cone Christmas trees, played Christmas themed charades, and put together little baggies of reindeer food to put on the lawn for Christmas Eve. Fun stuff.

Third was Sophie's party in the afternoon so both Ben and Nina came too. It was a very laid-back Christmas party with treats and America's Funniest Home Videos viewing. At the end they played a hilarious game were 2 kids dressed in red, over sized, Santa-ish, long-underwear and a team of kids shoved as many balloons as possible into the long-underwear. The team with the most balloons won and it was a riot watching it all.

I'm so glad I got to go to all their parties. I thought it was going to feel totally overwhelming, but really it was a blast! I'm so glad my kids are blessed with such great teachers and have such a great time at school.

Frazzled and Hopeful

I got my treat plates out! Check! So the only holiday baking I have left to do will be our Finnish ribbon cookies for Santa and pies for our Christmas Eve dinner (I'm pondering about whether or not I should attempt a pecan pie - very intimidating, but if I succeed yumminess would ensue). I swear it is like Christmas just appeared out of no-where this year and I'm trying to play catch up. The day after Thanksgiving we did tons of Christmas shopping because Adrian had the day off, but even then it felt like Christmas was so far away! And it seemed like I was Christmas shopping early (even though I usually start in like October). What is with me this year? When we first started receiving Christmas cards I hurried and did ours in like 1 night. Then I got Christmas presents from the sweet ladies who I serve in the primary presidency with, so I got cracking on my treat plates and got them out on Sunday and Monday. Now tomorrow is the day of school Christmas parties... I'm helping to plan Sophie's and attending Sophie's, Ben's, and Nina's. Thank goodness they are at different times, but tomorrow is going to be super busy. I just wrapped the Christmas presents for teachers and got the treats for Sophie's party today.

Okay, so I'm getting the stuff done, but it just seems like I'm doing every thing last minute and I'm feeling a little frazzled and worried that I'm going to forget something. Which reminds me I need to get Ben's birthday party invites out like today! And I need to start thinking about what I'm going to wear to Adrian's company party. Ugh. I need a versatile black dress, but really don't want to go shopping for one... Or spend the money right now on one. What a crazy time of year this is. I really am trying to feel the Christmas spirit and focus on all the beautiful and positive things of this season so I need to cut down on the frazzledness. How do you do that?? I guess I'll focus on how all of this stuff I'm doing is to help celebrate the Saviors birth. That's why we put together and attend Christmas parties, make treat plates, and buy gifts like the magi did to celebrate His birth and if I keep that in mind hopefully I'll make through all this with the right spirit.

Sophie's Orchestra Concert and Warm Fuzzies

Another catch up post. We went went to Sophie's first viola concert and it was awesome! She was one of only 3 violas and since she was front and center it was easy to hear her. Of course it was very much a beginners sort of concert, but they worked hard and Sophie is progressing well. She said she really liked performing and that made me happy since she is usually very nervous about piano recitals.

After the concert we went to Village Inn for some pie. Oh so good pie! We have been filling up a "warm fuzzies" jar since conference when President Monson mentioned that primary children have been filling up similar jars with pom poms representing acts of service. Once the jar was filled we promised the kids a "warm fuzzies party" with hot chocolate, so we thought the night of Sophie's concert was the perfect night for pie and hot chocolate all around. I gotta say that it was a great experience to fill that warm fuzzies jar. We met together as family before bedtime and talked about acts of service everyone did that day. Sophie mentioned eating lunch or playing at recess with someone who needed a friend. Ben would mention how he shared toys with Nina or let Nina have a first turn with something. Nina's were some of the funniest with mentions of "playing nice", giving hugs, and even pooping on the potty (hey that totally counts!, but sorry for the grossness). Adrian would talk about helping co-workers with programming problems, and I would mention beds made and dinners cooked. We love those good ideas from conference and this one has certainly helped our family to focus on service more.

Naughty Blogger and Thanksgiving

I am such a bad blogger. I'm feeling blogging guilt even though I've told myself so many times, "there's no guilt in blogging". But alas there is guilt, because I've been reading everyones blogs, but not commenting. Sorry. I think I'm getting all the craziness back on track though. I'm done with the Christmas shopping (yay!) and I got over to the post office and mailed everything I needed to so that's 2 huge things off my list. Whew. And I finished making all my freezer meals for my freezer meal swap this Friday. Whew again. I just need to start all the Christmas baking and hopefully I'll get all the treats for friends and neighbors out this weekend. Here's hoping.

Because I've been such a bad blogger I haven't posted about Thanksgiving so here a little catch up. We had a quiet Thanksgiving at home. Yes, we actually ate at home - there are no Medieval Times in Colorado! But it was fun. We played Monopoly as a family and then ate our fill of all the traditional Thanksgiving foods (we ordered a Thanksgiving dinner package from Safeway complete with turkey and all the sides). Adrian got to carve a turkey for the first time! After stuffing ourselves we went to our traditional Thanksgiving movie, this year it was The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which I thought was hilarious and wonderfully quirky. (Definitely want to get that one on DVD!) We ended the day with pumpkin pie before bed. It was a great, relaxy, kind of Thanksgiving. Nice.
Just to clarify - that's sparkling cider we're drinking. :)