Christmas is a'commin

Our favorite Kick off to the Christmas season is the Sumner Bridge lighting! They had Roasted nuts, Hot chocolate and people singing carols! Then they have Santa and Mrs. Clause Count down to lighting the historical Sumner Bridge, followed by a fireworks show! This year it was particularly crowed, but it was fun anyway

We were super lucky to know somebody, who knows somebody, who knows "Santa" and we got to go to the North Pole this year! I had heard about this but figured it was just another picture place...oh no! This place is fantastic, it was FILLED with games, toys, crafts, movies, music and activities for the kids to do, then they come get you when its your turn to see Santa....no crying kids waiting in line! 

I was SO happy with how much time they took getting ALL three of my kids to feel comfortable and happy with Santa and all look at the camera and smile!!

Then this weekend was Extra busy! Friday night I sang the Messiah for my college class. The hall sat 300 people and we SOLD OUT!!! We were turning people away....it was kind of sad, but also kind of great!

 

The next morning we did the Reindeer 1K/5K, it was raining but we had a good time

Andrew of course ran the whole thing!

For the rest of us the best part was when we went back into the Gym after and sang, ate and saw Santa...but we couldn't stay too long because we had to Rush off to Mallory's Piano recital!

 

Mallory has only been doing lessons for a few months so she had a very simple Christmas melody, but she did Amazing and her Teacher sat next to her and accompanied her so it was really neat!

We decided we would go out to Applebee's to celebrate afterwards!

We had a really good time hanging out together...we were going to watch the Santa parade but it was raining so we decided to go to our friends Christmas party instead!

We had the most Wonderful uplifting Christmas Sunday ever! I Loved it!
We (of Course) started with Church!
Then we went to one of our favorite Christmas activities, the Festival of Nativities. There is a church near us who borrows HUNDREDS of people nativities to display every year. The Church is decorated amazing with lights and huge murals and Nativities of EVER kind are on display. Mallory's favorite was the Mermaid rendition, Spencer really liked the Charlie Brown nativity!

After that we went to visit Donner and Blitzen at our local nursery!

They had really fun scavenger hunt to for the kids to run around the nursery looking for things Santa dropped/ forgot and they got their scavenger hunt card punched!

THEN we went to my Grandmothers house and watched the First Presidency devotional with my family while eating cookies and drinking hot chocolate! I loved the talks and the music was beautiful! I love Christmas time when there are so many things we get to do together as a family! I hope my kids are making good memories!