Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was the best. It was the sweetest evening with our little fam. We normally spend Christmas Eve in Utah with Josh's family and it's a fun party with 25 little cousins running around giddy for Christmas. This year Christmas Eve felt really quiet with just the four of us at home, but it was a really neat night.

First up, opening new pajamas from grandma. (There's nothing like fresh jammies...)

We had been doing an advent during December where each night we read a scripture passage about Jesus Christ and then we added a "puzzle piece" to our nativity picture. We read the last scriptures passage on Christmas Eve and then added the last piece to our picture.

Bryn really wanted to act out the nativity after seeing it acted out in Primary on Sunday. Josh was both the donkey and Joseph at the same time. Bryn, of course, was Mary. Mya didn't want to wear any costume but she had a great time watching and laughing at Bryn and Josh's dramatic acting. 

I love this :)

I love this, too! Josh is such a good sport.

Bryn took the whole thing quite seriously and tried hard to stay in character, even when Mya was tormenting her and trying to rip off her scarf.

 Mya finally got a turn to hold the "baby Jesus"

 Bryn then announced we needed to act out "the other Christmas story- Santa and Rudolph". Oh boy. It seemed a little funny to act out the Santa story right after the nativity, but we kind of just went with it. I was cast as the sleigh/Rudolph and Bryn was Santa.

We left some gingerbread cookies for Santa and Bryn wrote a quick note that said "Santa, the carrot is for your reindeer. Is Rudolph still one of your reindeer?"

This was my first year stuffing the stockings! (Since we're normally at my parents house). It was really fun to buy little stocking stuffers for each person. I felt like a real mom :) 

Santa gave the girls a set of little people princesses and a little people zoo set....which I found at a thrift store for $2. I felt a little guilty using a thrift store toy set as their Santa gift, but the girls have absolutely loved it these last few days!

I have to say, there is something really magical about being at home for Christmas and starting our own traditions. Christmas Eve was just perfect!

Gingerbread Men with the Shims

On the Monday night before Christmas our Korean friends the Shims joined us for Family Home Evening. I made a big batch of my mom's yummy gingerbread cookie dough and they helped me roll out the dough, cut out the gingerbread men, and decorate them. When we carved pumpkins with the Shims in October they asked about the tradition of gingerbread men at Christmas since they don't do gingerbread men in Korea. It was fun to share one of our traditions with them and to hear about their Christmas and New Years traditions in Korea.

These girls are cute little friends

We still had our little "photo booth" backdrop set up from our Christmas party, so we took a few cheesy pictures with the Shims ....because Josh had been begging me for a few more photos of him in those Rudolph antlers :)

Christmas Sunday

 Christmas Sunday is always a special day and this year was no exception. The first thing the girls did when the woke up was open a present from their grandma: matching red purses, a locket necklace for Bryn, and a few little things for Mya. At church Bryn got to sing two songs with the Primary kids during the Christmas program and of course she was thrilled about that! I was in charge of a Christmas lesson in the Primary and we had fun reading from Luke 2, singing Christmas songs, and acting out the nativity. 

 Oh my goodness, I love these three. 

 Bryn's hand-under-chin pose is kind of killing me :)

(P.S. Hopefully when I learn how to use my new camera my pictures won't be so blurry.)

Also to be noted- our pitiful attempt at Christmas tree pancakes. Ha ha!

Bad Dreams

 Remember how we were gone for two weeks in November travelling to Montreal and New Jersey? Bryn and Mya slept in the same room as us that whole time and so when we got home Bryn was suddenly scared to sleep in her bedroom without us. The first two weeks of December were really rough because Bryn was waking up every single night for about an hour, saying she was scared of the dark, was having bad dreams, was scared to sleep without a parent, etc. We tried something different each night but nothing seemed to work. Bryn convinced us a glow in the dark "Pillow Pet" would solve the problem and it did work for two nights but then it just kept her up longer as she had fun changing the color of the glowing lights. 

 Finally "Elfie" arrived one morning with a lengthy, firm proclamation that Brynlee needed to stay in bed or else she'd lose Christmas presents. This probably sounds like mean parenting, but we were desperate! This note actually did the trick, along with having her sleep with headphones and an ipod playing classical music on repeat all night. She's slept through the night for the last ten nights and we all feel back to normal after those two crazy weeks of sleeping problems. 

 One of Bryn's incentives for staying in bed was that she would get to see the movie "Frozen" with her cute friend Emma.

 I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I think this was actually the first time I've taken Bryn to a real movie theater ...if this tiny New Hampshire theater counts as a real movie theater :) 

It was a really fun outing with Bryn and we loved the movie!

Hip Hip Hooray for normal sleep habits and for fun mommy-daughter dates!

Snow

Last winter was a bit of a shock after living in California. It was looooong and cold and it definitely took a toll on me. But so far I have loved the snow and the winter this year...maybe because we're planning to move back to warm weather and this will probably be our last snowy winter for a while. The view above is one of my favorites, it's the road that goes from Main Street into our grad student neighborhood. It looks so beautiful in the wintertime.

The view from our front porch | The view from our back porch

I pass this frozen river almost daily and I always think that gray-green ice is so pretty.

A very snowy Tuck building on a sunny day last week

 I always love walking by this pretty church on Dartmouth campus

 Baker Library

I love all the cute little shops on Main Street in Hanover and they look especially quaint with the snow and holiday decor.

 Pretty wreaths outside the Hanover Inn

 The downside to all this pretty snow? Slush.

Family Date Night in Vermont

The Saturday night before Christmas we went on a fun "family date" to a couple of our favorite places in Vermont. We drove about half an hour to Worthy Burger and had dinner on their patio with a fire blazing beside us ...That sounds really dangerous as I type it, but actually it was really cozy!

 Worthy Burger is popular because all the meat, cheeses, and toppings on their burger are grown locally in Vermont. This was our second time trying it and it's really good. 

 About 5 minutes from Worthy Burger is the Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial. Lots of the trees on the grounds were all lit up and it was really pretty. 

 Bryn had remembered this statue since last year and was excited to see it again. She also loved seeing the little stable with live sheep and a donkey. 

Inside one of the visitor centers there were cider and treats, as well as a beautiful collection of nativity sets. Mya loved playing with this plastic set and kept kissing the baby Jesus over and over. 

 Fun night with Josh and the girlies!

Snow Day #2

 Yesterday Mya took a good 3-hour nap in the morning and Josh, Bryn, and I spent the whole time playing outside in the snow. It was honestly the most fun I've had in a long time!

 Our number one objective was to build a snowman. But not just any snowman, it had to be "the biggest snowman EVER". Turns out, snow is a lot heavier than we thought! This was hard work!

 I can't look at these snowman pictures without smiling. 

I love this. Because he wasn't even joking. 

 The hard part, we soon realized, was trying to hoist the middle snowball onto the bottom snowball. Josh and I couldn't lift the middle snowball at all, so we had the *genius* idea for me to roll the snowball onto Josh's back and then he'd lift it up with his back. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but when I started rolling it onto his back it was totally flattening Josh to the ground. Haha! I'm still laughing about this.

 Idea #2 to lift it up with a beach towel - you know, kind of like playing water balloon volleyball :)

We could lift it up about a foot, but for the life of us we couldn't get it up high enough. We also broke our backs in doing this. Still paying the price for this one!

 Idea #3 was to build a ramp with snow and our slide. It took a little work (and we ended up making the middle snowball a lot smaller), but this method actually worked! It probably took about 45 minutes to figure out how to get the middle snow ball up in it's place, but it was some pretty good entertainment! 

 Woohoo!

Mya finally woke up and was proud of our hard work :)