Christmas Festivities

I'm going to attempt to get all caught up on my Christmas posts here over the next few days.  (ha wish me luck!) That being said, this post is going to lump together the rest of our Christmas activities leading up to Christmas all into one post to help me along.  ;)

*Neighborhood Cookie exchange-  We've lived in our wonderful neighborhood for almost two years now, and we've yet to meet half the neighbors on our street!  Yikes.  It was a good surprise to receive an invitation to a cookie exchange one of our neighbors was hosting.  We live on a small street at the very back of the subdivision, so there are only a few houses back here (it's really nice traffic wise because mostly the only cars on this little part of the road are the people who live on this street) Anyway, we were instructed to make 2-3 dozen cookies and split them by the half dozen.  So I made my specialty Chocolate Chip Oatmeal and Walnut cookies.  We went to their house on a Saturday and spent the afternoon getting to know our neighbors.  It was a ton of fun, and the girls made some new friends.  Most of the kiddos are a bit older than they are, but our next door neighbors have a little girl just a year older than Natalia that they played well with.  We also discussed doing a street bbq this summer, since we could essentially shut down our own little street and set up tables and bbq's to all hang out one night.  Super fun!

*Natalia's school Holiday party- I got to volunteer in Natalia's classroom again for her Holiday Party.  I love going and helping!  My cousin Briana is in town for her Christmas break so she watched Lydia and Quinton for me while I was gone.  Natalia's class had a Polar Express party so they wore their pj's and read the book together.  Mrs. Head gave them bells to wear around their necks and then they had hot cocoa and decorated cookies as well.  They got to wear hats to school that day for spirit day too.  I ran the craft station, and the kids were supposed to make poinsettias.  It was funny seeing who actually cared to do a good job at it and who just wanted to goof off and cut whatever which way they wanted.  After the party we took Briana out to lunch and frozen yogurt to thank her for watching Lydia and Quinton that morning and just get to some quality time with her.  =)

*Cookie day- we had our fourth annual (or maybe fifth I can't keep track anymore!) cookie day with Charlie's family.  This is the second year we have done it here, and since we have the big kitchen and double ovens I have a feeling it'll be here all the time.  ;)  Anyway, we kept super busy and made lots of cookies... and didn't even finish!  So we had to do a part two the following Sunday to finish up.  Either way we walked away with a ton of yummy cookies and the cousins had a blast playing together.    We also made sugar cookies and had the kiddos decorate them.

*Regulars dinner:  I can't remember if I called it that back in July when we had some of Charlie's high school buddies with their families over for the afternoon.  Anyway, they called themselves The Regulars back in high school. So that's what we called the dinner ha ha ha.  We managed to coordinate a night that both Josh's family and Alex's family would be in town for Christmas and then got the rest who live here already to come.  It was so fun to see all the babies together!  Josh and Kencee have twin boys (Adam and Benjamin) born beginning of February.  Alex and Meghan have Benjamin born March 2nd.  Add on top of that that Bobby and Angela's little girl, Paisely was born in  June, and then Kendra and Hans have a baby girl born end of March... we had a lot of babies here!   Quinton by far outweighed all of them though ha ha ha. This baby is massive.  He's my chunky monkey!  Of the boys he is the least mobile though, he's still army crawling (but using his knees more and more)  Alex and Meghan's Ben is almost walking and is go go go.  The twins are hands and knees crawling and can pull themselves up to standing.  We did a taco night and just enjoyed catching up with everyone and watching the babies interact.  I wish we could do this more often because I really do like hanging out with all of them!

Benjamine Crane (Alex and Meghan) with Benjamin and Adam Graves (Josh and Kencee)

Q man

Quinton with his future buddies!  Can't tell here, but he's on his knees.  He's been pulling up to his knees a lot lately, just not all the way standing.  It's also hard to see that he is so much bigger than all of them. =) 

Lydia did her usual shyness thing (not sure why!) and hid upstairs, but this time she had Charlie help her change into the unicorn costume from dress up.  ha ha ha.  (earlier that day they had a dentist appointment, that's what the picture on the right is from)

*Misc pictures:

We watched our niece Jocelyn a few afternoons this last month.  We tried to stay busy during those times and came up with some fun things to do.

Princess tea party.  Complete with teeny tiny pieces of cheese, apple, and pb&j sandwiches to fit onto their teeny tiny tea plates

Snowman craft.  It didn't turn out at all like I thought it would (Pinterest fail) but they had tons of fun making them.  The foam never dried out completely so we ended up having to toss them

Making Santas!

As a family we spent a couple of nights making a little gingerbread village.  They turned out awful ha ha ha, but in the end the girls did enjoy taking a few bites out of them. 

One afternoon I was desperate for some quiet time.  Lydia's been hit and miss with her naps... so I made them a deal that if she took a nap and Natalia did her quiet time while Quinton was napping then we could make a project afterwards.  So while they fulfilled their end of the deal I got to sit on my bum watching Hart of Dixie and I hole punched some things out to be ready for when they woke up.  They loved this one in particular and I think it turned out pretty cute and it was so easy.  =) 

*Pedicures:  we are so full of Christmas traditions with Charlies family! ha ha ha.  Cookie day, sibling date night, I think Winter Garden A Glow is going to be added after this year's fun.  And then of course we go and do a pedicure together.  This year John joined us ladies.  The ladies down at the salon we go to love him because he has giant toes/toe nails so they can do fun little art drawings on his toes.  The gal drew grass and flowers with blue sky on his big toe and it turned out pretty darn cool.  I got my usual red sparkly toes.  =)

And with that I think I'm just about caught up!  Gotta start working on my Christmas posts now.  But that will have to wait.  My sick and teething almost 10 month old just woke up from another all too short nap.  Teething sucks.  Big time.