Goodie plates, Star Wars, and the eternal poinsettia

12/15--Preschool at our house still!  Most of our friends were out of town or busy, so it was just Abby and Ella.  They had fun doing Christmas crafts and reading Christmas books together! 

 12/16--The day of the big recital!  After the rocky start to the dress rehearsal, I held my breathe to see how she would do, but she did great!  Much more solid than the first time. lol.  This time around we only video taped the performance, so these pics were mostly taken with my phone. 

Cinnamon. Nuts!

 The whole class!  We love Ms. Heidi!

Very proud of our girl!

At the end of the recital, Ms. Heidi gave all the girls their own Christmas bell and a nice note. 

Gotta love Amazon Prime at Christmas time!

12/18--Christmas sing-a-long at the school!

Since Josh is in the 6th grade, he was selected with several other kids to be a leader of the hand actions during the song, Sleigh Ride.  He thought he was pretty qualified because he's done them for seven years now.  lol. 

12/21--We went and looked at Christmas lights and drove by our favorite house in town!

Love getting Christmas cards from all of our friends!

12/22--Darrin took the boys to see Star Wars in 3D and Ella and I went to see the Peanuts Movie.  It was alright.  Let's just say I got a nap in :)  Star Wars was a hit thought! 

12/23--We made and delivered our Christmas goodie plates! 

The kids had so much energy so we took them to the church to play basketball.  We are forcing these two to play this winter, so we were hoping to inspire them a bit. 

Ella really wanted to work the gum ball machine we have laying around, but we're out of gum balls.  She solved that problem; she made her own.  lol. 

We saved our poinsettia from last Christmas and for the most part kept it alive all year.  Now we are in the process of turning the leaves red by locking it in a dark room for most of the day.  Surprisingly it is working.  Maybe we can have the same plant make an appearance 3 years in a row? 

Pool and a brave girl.

12/7--I helped Andrew's class make clay snowflakes for Christmas.  It was pretty quick and fun to interact with the kids in his class. 

12/9--Ella's painting from preschool.  She has struggled to learn her colors, so I thought a whole lesson on them would help.  The jury is still out whether it did or not... 

Gotta love winters in OR.  Rain.  Rain. Rain.

12/10--Darrin and I were able to go to ward temple night together.  On the way home we stopped and picked up some cheesecake.  Yum.  Fresh banana.  My fav. 

12/11--For breakfast club we had a white elephant gift exchange.  Lots of laughs were had by all!

Love these ladies!

I made these cookie press cookies for the bishopric Christmas party.  Usually when I make them I want to throw the press across the room out of frustration.  This was the first time everything worked out.  The trick is always use cold cookie sheets and cold butter. 

Someone arranged this under the tree.  I thought it was sweet. 

Bishopric Christmas party!  We enjoyed a yummy dinner, desserts and lots of pool.  It was a lot of fun!  I even won one game thanks to Darrin's help :)

In the end, we said the person who wins the last game, wins the whole tournament.  Kelly ended up winning!  It was only fitting. 

Darrin got new glasses.  Very stud-like if you ask me. 

12/12--Ella's dress rehearsal for her dance recital!  Before the recital began we could hear Ella crying back stage.  I prepared myself for her to refuse to dance and want to sit with us the whole time.  She came out from the curtain still sniffling, but much to my surprise, stayed where she was supposed to and tried her hardest to dance. 

After a couple of minutes of sadness and us cheering her on, her attitude changed, and she decided it was fun.  She was golden after that!  The theme of the program was the Polar Express.  It was just about the cutest thing I'd ever seen and super fun to watch. 

We are very proud of our Ella girl!

Darrin and Ella put up the Christmas lights!  It was raining, but that never stopped anyone. 

That night we decided to watch the Polar Express since Ella had never seen it.  She had fun hearing the music from her dance recital.  I made snickerdoodles and totally burned the first batch.  That's one way to portion control. lol.