Christmas 2023

 I'm still trying in vain to catch up on this old blog.WHY is it so hard to blog these days? I guess because I do everything from my phone these days and blogging on a phone is terrible. Also my google accounts aren't syncing making it way harder to get photos from my blog. Anyways here I am trying.  I'm going to try to hit the rest of the highlights of the past few months before  I move to current day.  

Here we have Christmas 2023. By Christmas I mean anything Christmas-y we did in December. 

This was our first Christmas in our new house, in our new town and Sorrel's first Christmas. It was so special! I loved it so much for so many reasons.

We started off the Christmas season with a tree lighting, dance and santa visit at our local community center. This was the cutest event I have ever been to in my life. Our little town consists of 800 people, mostly farmers and ranchers and multi generational families. This event was straight out of a hallmark movie. There was a band that consisted of older people playing an accordian, a trumpet and more instruments that I can't remember, along with members of the band singing Christmas songs. People of all ages were on the dance floor, dancing to songs like Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer and White Christmas. It was just darling. I haven't been to a dance for adults...ever. Leland and I didn't even have dancing at our wedding, and most of the weddings I've been to don't either. But this little town has dances for every holiday and it's just so pure.

Ok, enough rambling about that. At the end of the night Santa came, the kids were thrilled. (This was probably our last Christmas with all of our kids believing. And that's one reason it was my favorite.) Even Sorrel sat on his lap without getting scared! Santa gave them all a bag of candy and then we went outside for the tree lighting and they passed out cookies and hot chocolate. 

I got this little sweater for Sorrel when I found out I was pregnant last fall, she looked darling in it! I will definitely be saving it for my future babies and grand babies to wear. 

The kids in their matching Christmas Pajamas, part 1. These were their Christmas pjs last year. I just happened to have an extra one for Sorrel so they wore them again this year. 

Around Christmastime we read "These Happy Golden Years" and the kids became obsessed with the idea of going on a horse drawn sleigh ride. So I told them we could go and we went to Hardware Ranch to see the elk. There actually wasn't enough snow for the horses to pull a sleigh so it was a horse drawn wagon ride but we all enjoyed it just the same. 

I thought I had never been to Hardware Ranch, but then Aunt Kris saw me post about it and send over this photo of my and my sister Kylee. I am the one being held by a friend of Aunt Kris. 

In December it has become a tradition to celebrate the Swedish holiday, St. Lucia Day. This year and last year we have had a party for it with all of our homeschool friends. It's really fun and one of the kids' favorite day of the year. 

Making the Lussekatter (Lucia Rolls)

Some of our friends who came to the party. 

Baby Lucia

The original Lucia

Someone here did the 12 days of Christmas for us! People are so nice! Sometimes I wish they weren't so nice because I feel guilty that I will never have the time or energy to reciprocate or pass it on! BUT This year instead of giving the kids money do sibling gifts we also choose a family to do the 12 days of Christmas to. It was the girl's idea and they were great at helping me organize and wrap everything, The boys were a little perturbed that the items I bought were not for them. I tried to explain that if we do nice things for other people then maybe other people will do nice things for us. So imagine my surprise when, after having Leland sneakily drop off our 12 days of Christmas, someone dropped off a 12 days of Christmas for us on our porch! It was a good lesson for the boys ha. And whoever did it for us was way more elaborate and creative than the one we gave ha. It's okay, now we have lots of ideas for 12 days of Christmas in the future. 

The first thing they gave us was a gingerbread decorating kit. Let me just say, with small children, decorating gingerbread men, instead of an entire gingerbread house, is definitely the way to go .

I attempted to teach the kids about the four Sundays of Advent this year. We dressed the kids in Christmas church clothes for each one. 

Moses in his little lederhosen. I love them. Leland has a lot of German and Swedish ancestry, and I do to to a lesser extent, so I love incorporating those things in our traditions. 

We had a strangely warm December. It snowed at the beginning of December and that was it. We had warm days, even in the 50s right before Christmas. It was especially disappointing after last year's record breaking snow year. But we did get this pretty hoar frost one day. 

We went with Kylee's family to Ogden's Christmas Village. Again it was strange to be hardly cold and no snow. But I think Christmas Village is the best Christmas lights in Utah and the kids all thoroughly enjoyed it. We took William with us too.  

A Christmas baby napping on his Christmas pillow. 

A chunky Christmas girl in her darling Christmas dress. 

I loved having our new tree up in this living room. It made me think of the more than 90 Christmases that have been held in this house! Were they happy ones? Were they loud and chaotic like ours always are. My thoughts very often turn to the builders of this house and wondering what they would think of it now to see us living here. 

Christmas Eve was on a Sunday this year which felt just perfect. If I had it my way I would have us always go to church on Christmas Eve. 

On Christmas Eve we also did our traditional nativity play. Leland and I have created quite the troop of actors if  I do say so myself. Esther and Adele were reprising their roles as Angel and Mary, respectively. Israel was Joseph and Julian was a wise man/shepherd. Moses was supposed to be a sheep but mostly just whined out "What do I do?!" the entire performance. 

Sorrel was the baby Jesus of course. Aren't these children so lucky that Leland and I provide them a new baby to be Jesus every other Christmas? ;)

This year I got the idea into my mind to make new Christmas nightgowns for the girls. It had been a few years since the first ones I made them and Adele had worn hers to shreds. Of course if I was sewing something for the girls the boys wanted something too. I attempted to make my own pattern for theirs and it didn't turn out great. But they got them on for a picture at least. 

Christmas Eve is full of so much excitement! This year the girls had worked for many weeks on homemade gifts for each other and were SO excited to give them to each other. It is just such a sweet anticipation, Christmas night. 

Santa Came! 

A close up of the doll house Esther desperately wanted. I didn't know how many more Christmases she would want actual toys so I had to splurge and get it for her. All the kids were excited about it and like playing with it. 

Adele opening the gift Esther made for her. A rag doll :)

The girls worked for months writing and illustrating books for the boys with them as the main character. It was so sweet. I know I'm their mom so I'm biased, but their stories were amazing! 

Julian's book was about him and his robot friend named Meerjay. The girls created a real Meerjay for him to go along with the book. 

Adele made Esther a story about her and Poppy in which Poppy could fly. 

And Adele sewed a pillow for Esther to go with the book.

We went on a walk on Christmas Afternoon and I loved that (it was great weather!). Esther got new roller skates to try out and I loved to be outside spending a little more time together. As I said at the beginning, it was such a sweet Christmas season. I'm incredibly grateful for Leland and our home and our little family and all the wonderful blessings we have.

And to end, some chunky baby legs in her new wool socks. :)