So that was Christmas

Christmas has come and gone, but before everyone was traveling for the holidays we were busy here with lots of things! It was unseasonably warm all month with only the occasional dusting of snow, so to get into the Christmas spirit, we drove a couple hours north to Wheeling for the Winter Festival of Lights. We headed up early and had a nice dinner, then drove through the resort to see all the lights. Traffic moved slowly through the resort so people could get a good look at all the displays. We tried to take some pictures, but it's not too easy while driving.

The dinosaurs were moving too.

We walked around a little too but it was pretty cold out that night so we didn't stay out too long. They had lights decorated all over the place though!












We met someone nice enough to take a group picture by the big lighted tree :)

A tunnel of lights leading to more lights.

We planned an ugly Christmas sweater party open-house for the following weekend, and of course, we had to make cookies! We had a lot of fun creating some reindeer cookies, sugar cookies, and pepper nuts. While Abby used a traditional cookbook to find recipes, Ben decided to find a less-than-detailed recipe for sugar cookies on the internet. In a picture below he is adding some baking powder about an hour after he thought he was ready to start rolling out the dough! In the end, his cookies did taste ok :)

The girls smiling like Ella

Adding a missing ingredient

The reindeer cookies

Decorating the sugar cookies

Yum!

The party was fun and a lot of our friends from church showed off their great "ugly" sweaters too. We played some games, including Twister and Foosball, and had a "How many M&Ms are in the jar contest. We even were able to get together for a few seconds to take a group picture!

Merry Christmas!

Then just before we all started going our separate ways for the holidays, we had a "secret Santa" gift exchange in the house. The kids weren't actually part of it but we let them open a present they'd bought each other :) Then off we all were for the next two weeks! Well, not all at once. There was always someone coming and going it seemed for the next two weeks. Some went home over Christmas, others over New Year's. Then we finally had our first snow storm the night before school was to start! So we're just now starting to get back into our regular routines!

Ella bought Ian R2D2

Ian bought Ella an Ariel Barbie

Renee got footie pjs to match Allison's