Norby News: December Traditions

One of my very favorite holiday traditions is visiting the very best Santa ever at the Children's Village. This year with our schedules for whatever reason we visited on Saturday instead of Friday night and we had to wait in line for about an hour. However they had a couple activities while we waited in line.

I invited several couples over for dinner and for the kids to act out the nativity story. I assigned the parts beforehand and some of the kids (Braxton) took it very seriously.

Olive got to play the part of Jesus

Autumn got to be the narrator

Violet showing off her Christmas outfit. I really love buying Christmas outfits for my kids and Christmas Jammies.

Autumn really loves to read. Sometimes she'll even read to her siblings.

Maverick wore his Jammies to the Ward party. Maverick ate chocolate and pretzels for dinner.

Lark joined the primary kids in singing a few songs as part of the program.

Olive in her Christmas outfit.

Autumn helped the kids draw pictures of what they wanted for Christmas to give to Santa at the Children's Village. Maverick decided upon a Dinosaur and Bumblebee Transformer

Violet asked for a makeup set and a tea set.

Autumn's drawing

Autumn asked for "teeth" (she was missing her front teeth), socks, Barbie head (the kind wear you can style their hair), construction paper, and a nice friend (she wasn't getting along with her bestie Addalyn at the time)

This was at the Children's village previously mentioned

The girls had more Christmas outfits than the Maverick so he insisted on wearing this 2T Santa top throughout the season.

Lark was afraid of Santa. One night she didn't want to go to bed because she didn't want Santa to come to our house. She was now sleeping in the toy room since Olive was in the nursery. It was becoming very difficult to put her to bed. She was afraid to sleep alone, so some nights we just let her sleep on the floor in the twins' room.

Lark being cute watching a Christmas movie

Lark likes to help me make dinner or at least sit on the counter and watch me cook

Olive sitting in a high chair instead of the Bumbo.

I was SO excited when I found a plaster nativity set at Hobby Lobby. When Evan wasn't around I let the kids paint them. Lark is very careful and surprisingly enough has lots of pacience with these types of activities. Maverick liked to paint and repaint all his figurines. Autumn was upset at the distribution of the figurines and was annoyed at the way everyone else was painting their figures (not using the "right" colors, not painting them carefully enough etc.). Violet was meticulous but ended up getting bored before she finished all her pieces and had to finish a different day.

Lark loves Olive. Lark however is not very gentle with her sister.

We made a tree with the kids' hand prints.

One of the kids took my phone one day and was snapping random pictures. I thought this one was very artsy. I also have a strong affinity for sticky window clings.

Evan and I usually have a hot cocoa date night sometime in the winter, but this year we did it as a family. Some of the kids got white hot cocoa, others with mint and some regular. Most of the kids did not finish their drinks but Violet gladly made sure all the drinks were empty before we left. She absolutely loves hot chocolate. All the kids think they love it and beg for it often, but Violet is the only one I can truly count on to actually finish it all off.

The Air Force based hosted a free rock climbing with Santa event for all ages. Autumn attends the rock climbing club weekly, but the other kids are too young. I made a point of getting all the kids their early so they could climb since there wasn't an age restriction this day. I was surprised at how well and so high Lark climbed. Violet and Maverick did really well too.

We didn't however wait around to met Santa because Violet, Autumn, Olive and I were attending a "tea party" at the Historic Governor's Mansion. Evan was working so Lark and Maverick played at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

We attended the tea with Autumn's bestie Addalyn and her mom and sister.

The kids love to play with dad's hair while he reads them bedtime stories.

Violet's static hair

Olive is 7 months! She sits on her own. She grabs at everything. She won't nurse in public, she gets too distracted. She doesn't like "real" food. She will flip and squirm whenever she hears daddy's voice so she can see him. She loves when he comes home from work. She rolls all over the place to get to where she wants to be. She is a content baby. I have nic named her Ollie pop and Ollie Cat.

One of my very favorite Christmas time traditions is eating Dark Chocolate peppermint ice cream from Cold Stone. The last few years they have had the dark chocolate ice cream and we've had to mix in candy cane which gets hard in the ice cream and not ideal. We were thrilled to see that the brought back the flavor with the peppermint already in it. The kids enjoy this tradition, but always get nasty stuff like cotton candy or bubble gum. After ice cream we drove around and looked at people's light displays.