City Sidewalks, Busy Sidewalks Dressed in Holiday Style

Anna was quite the patient one while I had my hair appointment.  Lots of you tubes playdough videos got us through that one! :)  It sure felt nice to have my hair done though.  I seriously need to learn how to blow it straight like that.  It will not look as good until I go back in two months haha

We went to a really fun fundraiser that our friends put on.  One of the their high school friends has a brain tumor (it's so sad.  He is a great father and husband and I just can't imagine the stress of dealing with that), so they put on a super amazing Christmas night complete with great catered food, games for the kids, silent and live auction, and Santa!  Santa was AWESOME too.  He spent a lot of time with each child.  Wyatt was in heaven.  Anna felt a little too shy to talk with him, and Jackson wasn't interested he said

Our elf Sarah (along with her naughty twin sister Susan) have been having some fun in the house!

 

Anna asked me at Costco the other day if I could buy her some of the jewelry that was on display . . . uhhhh, no haha

 

We met the Madsens, Derrick, and Katie at temple square to see the Christmas lights!  It was so fun!  I seriously can't describe the recharge I get when I'm around my siblings.  They are just awesome people that I love to hang out with.

 

I discovered that it's really hard to take good pictures at the lights display.  The lights that you want you to see in the pic make for terrible back lighting! 

It makes for OK selfies though haha

We wandered into the Conference Center because we heard that we could see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir practice, however they technically weren't letting people in yet, and apparently you could only be on the 4th level (which is where we went up to) if you are in doing a guided tour.  Luckily, a nice man took pity on us and took us out to the observatory deck which had great views.  It was pretty cool.

But not as cool as seeing the choir practice!  It was super fascinating to see how detailed (and actually pretty blunt) the director is with them!  I guess I kind of assumed that the choir members are so good (which obviously they are) that they didn't need too much direction.  And that is why they are so good, folks!

Tired Anna had enough walking.  This definitely helps with my argument that we SHOULD take a stroller to Disney World (Erik doesn't want to).

 

Jackson really wanted to check out the visitor's center.  Since it's temple square there are several, but the one we ended up in was really cool!!!  It's just amazing to me the spirit that comes with the temple. 

We had said our good byes to the Madsens after we were done watching the choir practice (Kathryn's girls really wanted to go to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building) and I was very creeped out when I got a text from Kathryn 30 minutes later saying she could see me haha They were standing right outside that huge window.  I did this same type of thing to Derrick on a freeway in the summer (that was super random, he happened to be on his way to Montana and we were going up to Ogden and we passed him on the freeway.  I saw him texting and I texted him to stop doing that while driving and he was VERY freaked out.  It was hilarious). 

As I moved the chairs one morning to sweep and mop, I remembered my mom doing the same thing and she would tell me it was a choo choo train that I could ride.  Anna thought this was pretty much the greatest thing ever haha  It's the little things.

 

Erik and I got invited to a fun Ugly Christmas Sweater party.  It was a lot of fun.  Lots of fun games, good food, and great friends.  Unfortunately we had to leave before the white elephant game.  We decided not to get a babysitter, so the kids made us promise we would be back when their movie ended.  Once it ended Wyatt called, told us to come home, so we did :)

And Erik Insisted that he wear these elf shorts.  It really did liven up the party.  But honestly there were much more shocking things people were wearing haha We were the tame ones!

Yup that would be my husband passing out his candy canes to all of the ladies hahaha

This was a sweet treat from Sarah (ya know the nice one)

I was very excited to take the family to Christmas Around the World at BYU.  I thought it would be the perfect way to get into the Christmas spirit (because we hadn't really done anything Christmassy yet haha)  Anyway, there were 4 dances I LOVED:  the Bollywood India one, the Hatian one (that reminded me a lot of an African Dance clinic I did during a dance camp once), an American percussion one (they had different types of percussions dancing- step, tap,  and clogging), and the finale was the energetic Russian one with all sorts of flips and athletic Russian jumping and kicking.  Other than that though, I have to say it was pretty boring!  I told Erik next year we will do the Nutcracker and let me just tell you he was th-rilled!!

 

After driving back home, we stopped at The District for dinner.  We settled on . . . oh gosh I can't remember the name haha  It's just like a diner that mostly is known for breakfast foods and pies.  I would say it's step up from IHOP but probably a step down from Cracker Barrell ;)

And the kids used great restaurant manners!

More decorating!  Kathryn bought these cute clip arts from etsy and made these Merry Christmas sings in different languages.  I like them quite a lot!

Sweet Anna dancing whenever the choir sang during the Christmas devotional.  It was nice to watch it live at a decent hour!

 

For FHE on Monday, I taught the kids about Hanukkah.  There was nice article in the newspaper over the weekend that explained the history in a simple way.  I had also bought a cute children's books about an old lady and a bear preparing for a feast over Hanukkah.  Then we played dreidel!  The kids were all over that.  I should say that Wyatt knew everything I taught already.  This week he was been learning how different countries celebrate the holidays and Monday's subject was Israel :)  He also has taught us about Italy and Germany's celebrations.

Anna's preschool is canceled this week (her teachers are in Disneyland-lucky!), so I'm having to be a bit more creative in my working out.  On Monday, we went to the church to workout (they have a fun bootcamp where kids are invited), Tuesday I took her for a run/walk, and tomorrow I'm really hoping that she will let me put her in the gym day care tomorrow so I can get a run in the treadmill-- fingers crossed!