Holiday Happenings

Yeah, yeah, I know this is quite belated, but "c'est la vie."

We officially started our Holiday season shortly before Thanksgiving with a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Winters. As is typical, they brought down a Suburban full of treasures and goodies, which led me to question whether we actually needed Christmas.
Their visit consisted primarily of game playing, bike riding (well, adults walked, kids rode bikes), book reading (lots and LOTS of book reading - I was afraid Grandpa might lose his voice reading to Aubree so much), and hanging out around the house. The kids were thrilled to have extra attention and even Bryce warmed up quickly.
One beautiful Florida day we ventured out to Magic Kingdom.
Grandma is very adventurous and particularly enjoys the fastest, craziest rides. Since Aubree isn't nearly so daring, Bryce isn't big enough, and I'm pregnant, sometimes we'd stick to the more mild attractions while the others went off thrill-seeking. Strangely enough, my most fond memory of the day was seeing the Country Bears Jamboree show. Now, to be honest, the show is pretty lame, but you wouldn't know it to see Bryce's reaction. I don't know that I've ever seen him get so excited. He was literally spinning around in circles in his glee and kept grabbing Mark's face saying, "look, Dad, LOOK!" He was five times as entertaining as the show.

I love that Grandpa is the only one really smiling in this picture!

When Grandma and Grandpa left to go back to Pennsylvania, the kids were pretty bored with just me to entertain them. Thankfully the holiday events and activities kept us plenty busy!
**One Christmas tradition we've had for the past few years is to go to the local hospital for Breakfast with Santa. It's fun to get a picture with Santa and the kids always leave with a little bag full of little gifts, too. I figured Aubree wouldn't have any problems with Santa, but wasn't sure how Bryce would react. He ended up doing pretty well. You can see in his picture below, he mostly just seemed confused as to why his mom dropped him on the lap of a funny looking stranger.
The funniest part of our morning came when we got Aubree's picture back and noticed something strange (look below and see if you can figure it out)...
Did you notice how her shirt and one of her bows exactly match the background? Pretty good planning on my part, right? No. Aubree was wearing a green shirt and a green bow, which, when paired with the green screen behind Santa resulted in her unusual coordination with the background.
**This year we decided it was Mark's turn to run in the Reindeer Run 5K. Despite great intentions, he didn't train as much as he'd hoped prior to the run (translation - he didn't train at all). Thus, he was disappointed in his finishing time and I had to roll eyes because even without any preparation he still did WAY better than anything I've ever done.

Mark and Larry, pre-race

After Mark finished running, the kids had a chance to run mini-races. Aubree and her best pal, Ella, signed up to run the 1/4 mile race. Bryce stayed and cheered with Dad (he can run next year...)
I got to "run" with the girls, yet no matter what I said, I couldn't convince them not to hold hands the entire race.
**Another fun Christmas tradition is decorating Gingerbread houses. Bryce was way more interested in eating the decorations than using them, so house decorating duties fell mainly to Aubree. Soon after she started her work, Ella came over and the two girls conspired to decorate the house together. In their final masterpiece displayed below you can find two gingerbread girls (Aubree and Ella, of course) standing at the door of their "real house" welcoming visitors inside. They worked together amazingly well and it's obvious they were thrilled with their final results.
I know we did a trillion other fun things around Christmas (like parades, work parties, ward parties, nativity scenes, preschool parties, visits with friends, etc.), but these are the things of which I have pictures, so it will have to suffice.
As a side note, I LOVE the Christmas season. I love all the activities and the hustle and bustle. My only complaint is that it goes by too quickly and there's just not enough time to enjoy each individual activity. So, here's my idea...how about we move Thanksgiving forward two weeks and have it on the second Thursday in November instead of the fourth Thursday? That gives us two extra weeks for Christmas fun! Whad'ya think??