December Before Christmas

 

I don't know why but blogger keeps uploading my photos in reverse order, it is very annoying! So here is a look back on our December. Starting with December 23rd when we went to Antelope Island. Leland's brother Alexander spent Christmas with us and we were looking for something fun to do outside. It had been a couple of years since we went to Antelope Island so we decided to go there. The kids loved it. They want to go back and swim at the beach this summer. 

So much salty foam on the water. 

I was happy we saw some bison close by the road this time! We enjoyed watching them from the car. 

Making sugar cookies with the kids, per tradition. This takes many hours but they love it and won't let Christmas go by without this tradition. 

These sisters are so sweet, they love sleeping on Esther's top bunk together with Birdy. 

For homeschool we listened to the book The Golden Name Day. It talks about how in Sweden there is an almanac of name days and a little girl who isn't on the list wants a name day too. When I looked at the almanac I was surprised to see that all of kids were on there! Or at least a variation of their names (Ester, Adela, Julius and Israel). Israel's name day was December 20th so we celebrated with a little brownie cake for him. 

We were all very happy when we got a few inches of snow mid-December. 

The Sunday before Christmas photo. I wish I would have gotten more pictures but I'm glad I got this one off all of us. 

Drive thru Christmas lights.

On December 17th, Baby Boy had his big court date. The judge decided to extend his case another three months with the plan for him to reunify with his mom sometime in February. Ugh it was such a heart wrenching day. I grieved our loss for a few days and now I feel a little better about the reunification and I'm trying to be supportive of everything. We sure do love him and we plan to still be a part of his life as much as possible. 

We visited "Forest School" as the kids call it after it snowed. It was so beautiful and quiet as we didn't see another person the whole time we were there. 

This was our second year celebrating St Lucia's Day on December 13th. We made Lussekatter and Peparkarkor. Esther dressed up as St Lucia, Adele was an attendant, and the boys were star boys. 

Visiting Ogden's Christmas Villiage. After Adele refused to wear a coat for weeks on end because her coat wasn't "pioneer enough" I gave in and bought the girls these coats from Amazon. They adore them and get so many compliments every where we go, which they adore even more. 

Other December adventures included visiting a dairy and lots of park days. 

A bad picture of the dried orange and cranberry garland we made this year. 

Matching Christmas pajamas. I am not a seamstress by any means but I made the girls nightgown because I didn't want to pay $40+ each to buy them. They turned out so cute, flaws notwithstanding. 

I started making sourdough bread again! It sure is tricky to get it right but it all tastes good. 

Julian got to put the star up this year since it is his first Christmas with us.

We got a live tree this year! It was fun to try it out and we didn't have any issues with it except it barely made it to Christmas before completely dying. It was a bit of a hassle though so we will probably go artificial tree next year.