Remember December

After Auntie Desha left, we continued to enjoy more Christmas events that we want to remember!!

We had one last playdate with Tanner's good friend before they moved. The four of these kiddos loved putting peanut butter and raisins on their own crackers! We also played with play do and had fun with playing house in the basement.

Tanner kept wishing that we could get some snow.

Love these little rascals.

Jeremy was very blessed this December because he got a PROMOTION!! He just finished an amazing year with canned chunk chicken by completely changing the labels on one of the products and developing some great strategies for the brands. Now, he will take his expertise to Natural Choice Deli Meat. He is really excited to work on a bigger brand and to work with a whole new team of colleagues.

So we went out to celebrate! We ate at one of the fancier pizza places in town. (We still laugh at how this town can maintain over 6 pizza joints while Quizno's, Target and the frozen yogurt place go out of business). The boys enjoyed writing in their journals while we waited for the pizza.

We enjoyed decorating cookies at Sheila's house and playing with friends. Thank you, Sheila for such a fun time!

That same day, we had a cookie exchange with the women at church. Good cookies and good company.

Before Thanksgiving, we enjoyed a special event at the Hormel Historic Home. I decided to wait on writing about it because it was a Christmas event. I am on the board that helped plan the event. We had soup, cookies and hot chocolate, holiday crafts, self guided tour of the beautiful Christmas decorations throughout the home, lighting ceremony of the garden, and Santa. The Santa turned out to be gorgeous. Even though I tell my kids that Santa is just pretend, Tanner and Dallin wanted to see him. "I know he's not real, Mom, but I really want him to be real." I said "That's okay! We can pretend." And we had a really fun time visiting with him. Tanner knew exactly what he wanted to ask Santa for. And when Dallin was asked what he would like, he said he wanted to go to his friend Maxwell's house. Santa asked him where is that? Dallin said I dunno know. So Santa suggested he ask for a GPS, and Dallin laughed. It was really sweet.

We enjoyed the grand opening of the athletic dome in our town. They had obstacle courses, bounce house and lots of ball games to play. Jeremy gets to go to the dome every Tuesday for flag football league that he is in during the winter. I've taken the boys there a couple times to run around the walking path that they have. It's nice to have a place to run around in the winter.

the walking path

Tanner gave a talk in primary at church. In our children's ministry, the kids ages 3-12 get really good at praying, reading scriptures and bearing testimonies to one another. Tanner prepared this picture for his talk. He is on the left, trick or treating and with an owie on his knee. Jesus is on the right, helping him feel better.

Below is a picture of the words he made me write so that he would be able to say everything he wanted to. The only prompt I gave him was "It's your turn to teach the kids about Jesus. Is there anything we can tell them about how Jesus has helped you with something?" He didn't have to think long before remembering this story. His talk says "My talk is about Jesus. We were trick or treating and I fell down because I was running with my trick or treating bucket. My family came and helped me. I cried and got an owie. I was really sad. Jesus knew that I got an owie. He helped the band-aide get all the blood on it and make me better. It was like a miracle! If you ever get hurt, you could put a band-aide on there and ask Jesus to help it get better. Jesus loves me. He loves all of you and your parents. He even still loves you if you don't come to church. But we should still come to church to show we love Him. In the name of Jesus Christ Amen."

Tanner improved a lot from his last talking experience in front of the primary children. Instead of keeping quiet and making his parents do all the talking, Tanner had Daddy read the words in his ear, and then Tanner spoke with a smile into the microphone. At one point it was cute because he had a very tight grip on the mic, and he got closer and closer into the mic. Jeremy had to pry him away from it when his voice was too loud, lol. I was so proud of my Tanner!!

One evening, Tanner got Jeremy to play super heros with him. They dressed up in all their "super gear," which was actually just snow gear, haha. They played for a good 30 minutes, just pretending to shoot each other with different powers, like freezing, and flying and shocking powers.

One afternoon, it was really sunny, but too cold to go outside, so we sat in the window while we colored so that we could get some vitamin D.

Tanner performed in his preschool winter singalong. He was so cute, singing with a big wide open mouth and knew every action and word.

They had Santa visit after the performance. Tanner said he wanted to give Santa a big hug. So we went to say hi.

Tanner wanted a picture with his brother before we left.

And then he wanted a picture by himself in a "cool position." So this is what he came up with.

One afternoon, we went to Lacey's house and made gingerbread houses with her kids. Here's what Tanner and Dallin came up with. They LOVED this activity. Thank you, Lacey!

Special roofing technique

We hosted our 3rd Annual Wassail Party, which is where we drink yummy Wassail and sing Christmas songs around the piano. I had a really fun time and it seemed like everyone that came had fun, too. We had lots of toddlers this year, so I tried to plan songs and games that would keep them busy.

Jeremy made three different Wassail recipes this year: Orange, Cranberry, and Pineapple. They were all delicious! We also succeeded in doing a duet where Jeremy played his drums in the basement right under us while I played piano. We did Jingle Bell Rock and Frosty the Snowman, and you could hear the drum part pretty well while people sang. It was pretty cool!

After the party, Jeremy said he thought we did too much singing, which just about made my blood boil since that is the entire point of having the party! But he might be right; I need to remember not everyone likes singing as much as I do, haha.