Our Christmas Season (In a Nutshell)

The month of December was busy with all things Christmas. Here's what we were up to:

CHRISTMAS PROGRAMS

Lots and lots of Christmas programs! The first one was Cohen's preschool program...


Can you find Cohen? It's a little like Where Waldo. He is sitting just below and a tad to the right of his teacher (the cute woman with the dark brown hair)...

I wasn't sure if Cohen would sing any of the songs or not. He is my shy child & he doesn't like performing for a crowd. But, he did great! He sang all the songs & did all the actions...

Then, about a week later, Connor & Aiden had their Christmas Sing at the Elementary School. Can you find Aiden in the huge group of Kindergarteners? He's on the bottom row, fourth from the left. You know...the kid who's Christmas tree headband is covering half his face. That's my boy...

And here's Connor with the rest of the 3rd grade. He's on the third row from the top, basically right in the middle of the picture, wearing a Santa hat that is 3 times too big for his head...

After the Christmas sing, Connor's class did a program by themselves for the parents...

They sang songs...

And each child had a part. Connor's part was to tell some Christmas jokes with one of his friends. It was really cute! Afterwards, the room mom presented Miss Funk, Connor's teacher, with an I Spy quilt. Each of the kids had drawn on a block. Connor drew Spongebob on his block. We decided to take a picture of it because Connor had done such a great job! He is quite the little artist...

So, those were the kids Christmas Programs. Always cute & fun.

CHRISTMAS CARDS

We sent out Christmas Cards. If you didn't get a one, I apologize. Consider yourself greeted...

CHRISTMAS CLOTHES

Every year, we give our kids some Christmas church clothes. They get to open them on the Sunday before Christmas. Christmas was on a Sunday this year, so I was originally just going to have them open & wear them on Christmas Day, but they begged to open them the week before, so we let them. They weren't really that excited about the clothes. I think they just wanted to open a present. Here they all are, looking festive...

Connor's not really into the whole wear-a-cute-sweater-to-church thing anymore, so he just got a tie that had Christmas trees on it. You can't really see it in the picture, but it's pretty cute.

NEIGHBOR GIFTS

I kind of went all out for neighbor gifts this year. I didn't mean to go all out, but my idea ended up being a lot more work & money than I thought it would be. I decided to make soup mixes. But, what I didn't realize is that I was basically making dinner for all my neighbors, which isn't easy...or cheap. Oh well. We called it "Snowman Soup" to make it a little more festive and put a cute poem with it. Here's how they turned out. I ran out of the blue tulle, so I started using my red. I didn't think I would like the red as much because it didn't really match the tag, but I ended up liking it more than the blue. What do you think?

Here's what the tag looked like, since it's too little to read in the above picture..

Here's a picture of the back so you can see what the soup mix looked like...

If you're interested in doing this as a gift (because you're crazy like me), or just as dinner for your family, here's the recipe:

1 3/4 cups spiral pasta

3/4 cup dried lentils

1/3 cup dried carrots

3 1/2 tablespoons dried onions

3 1/2 tablespoons chicken bouillon

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon parsley

1 3/4 teaspoon oregano

1/8 teaspoon garlic powder

Bring 10 1/2 cups water to a boil. Add soup mix & 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese. Reduce heat. Cover. Simmer for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.

WRAPPING PRESENTS

We wrapped lots & lots of presents. It seemed like every free evening we had, Mike & I would wrap presents. I usually hate wrapping presents, but it was kind of fun this year with Mike helping me. We'd turn on Christmas music or a movie & wrap away. We finally finished 3 days before Christmas...

It was a great month, all leading up to the BIG DAY! We had a wonderful Christmas that I'll post about later. Hope you had a wonderful Christmas season! --Lindsay