Some of our holiday "goings on"

We made ginger bread houses. I use a kit. Cheating is funner. We took them up to my dad's house to work on for Family Home Evening. It was a good time, and now the girls want to eat them...but they will have to wait.

Tessa is officially a big girl! No more car seats for her! It's a booster all the way! However, as you can see, this makes Maggie very sad, because she too wants to be a big girl in a big girl seat.
Maggie is a vegetarian. Well, we say she is. But she will eat chicken nuggets and hot dogs. But we really can't get her to eat anything other meat. We have on occasion told her that she needed to eat her meat if she was going to grow strong. Well, we obviously don't mean it. She can be a vegetarian if she wants. But I'm not going to make her her very own meatless meal, but if anything has meat in it, she won't even try it! It's so frustrating. So we have said little things to try to get her to eat. On this day...car seat day, she saw her big sister get a new booster seat. Maggie started bawling...the saddest cry I have ever seen from her. She had huge tears streaming down her face. She didn't understand. Suddenly between sobs she said "If I eat my meat I will get a new big girl seat too." It was so sad. So we have explained to her that she only needs to gain 4 pounds and then she can have a big girl seat too. (That is the regulation.) And we told her that she didn't need to eat meat to get bigger. The poor little thing.

This is a craft that we tried this year. Elmer's glue snow men Ornaments. They were pretty easy to make. Just pour out the glue in the shape of a snow man onto wax paper. Then decorate. The candy melted a little. She should have used pom poms or something. But the coriander for the face worked great. When they were dry we peeled them off the wax paper, and punched a whole for a string, and hung them on the tree! Cute...but they did curl a little after they were hung up. Oh well, it was fun.

We had our ward party...to which Santa came. Our girls have always sat on his lap, no problem. But not this year. They were scared and fighting to get away...but I see smiles...so at least they weren't crying and screaming.

Above is the program that the Young Women put on. I am in the Young Womens now so I was over this program. It was really fun actually.
(See me on the far left?)

And then we went to my parent's ward party, and Santa was there too! He must have a lot of parties to go to this time of year! And somehow, for Grandma, the girls at least got close to Santa. :)

The girls at my parent's ward party

We made pine cone bird feeders...still waiting to see some birds.

This picture was just funny. Don't mind my laundry. Look past it to the little cuties sharing the blanket cubby while they watch a show.

And I just have to add this. We got a package from Germany today with a bunch of fun and mysterious candy in it! We can't tell what we are biting into because we can't read the packages. But they sure are good! My brother and his family are in Germany. He is a doctor in the military. This was so fun I had to share. Going through the candy was like Christmas all by itself!

(Ben and Becky...the package was great, and Josh wrapped the unwrapped present before I could see it. However, on the box was a handy little list of what was inside. I scribbled it out before Josh saw it. lol. Is that a customs thing? Made me laugh! We appreciate the package so much! The candy made my day! And it's nice to finally know what German wrapping paper looks like. hehe. We love you guys!)