Christmas Crafts

We've been busy making all kinds of different crafts over the last few weeks.

We made homemade hot coco with stirring sticks and Chocolate Chip Cookies in a Jar for our friends and neighbors.

 We also made these cute Reindeer Root beers to give to friends and neighbors.

 We made Graham Cracker houses at the library.

 The finished products, Allison's is on the left and Ashley's on the right.  They had help with the structure but did all the decorating on their own.  =)  

 For some reason this picture would not turn the correct way...anyway we also made homemade Scented Ornaments at the library.  Funny story about these...we made them on a day Dan was working, they take almost a week to dry so I had them on a tray on the counter.  Dan got home about midnight that night and saw them on the counter and thought ooo a midnight snack and took a bite into one.  (The one that now looks like a moon) Anyway, Ashley woke up the next morning and immediately checked on her ornaments to see if they were ready for hanging...when she saw a bite had been taken out of one of her ornaments, she got all upset and said "someone ate my ornament!!" I can running and couldn't help but laugh, she did not find it funny at all, I told her to go wake her dad up and ask him.  She stomped into the room and said "Dad did you eat my ornament" dazed and confused he said "is that what that was" she kinda grunted and said "well you ate GLUE!!!" And stomped right back out of the room.  =)

Here is the recipe if you would like to try and make your own next year.

Scented Ornaments
1cup regular applesauce (not Chunky)
11/2 cups ground Cinnamon
1/3 cup white glue
Assorted cookie cutters
drinking straws
colored ribbon

In a mixing bowl stir together ingredients.  Form the mixture into a ball, wrap in plastic - chill for at lease 30 mins until dough stiffens.  Sprinkle more cinnamon on a cutting board or waxed paper lined surface - turn chilled dough on to it.  Make your ornament shape, use a straw to make a hole so when the ornament is dry you can have a hole to hang it with the colored ribbon.  Allow to dry at room temperature for about 5 days.

Merry Christmas!

From our Family to yours we wish you a very Merry Christmas!

We hope that you will have good times spent with family and friends and remembering the real reason for the season...the Birth of Jesus Christ.

Merry Christmas & God Bless!

Dan, Melissa, Jordan, Ashley & Allison

Ho Ho Ho

Thought i would share Ashleys letter to Santa with you.  She wrote the top and bottom, i helped fill in the middle.  =)

 Then we were off to the post office to mail it to the North Pole

About 2 weeks after we sent our letter to the North Pole, Ashley received a letter back from Santa...I promise we did not send it to her.

Well we definitely had our fare share of Santa visits this year.  Here are a couple more of our visits with the Man in the Red Suit.  

 Last week Mr & Mrs Clause stopped by the library to visit with all the kids.  Ashley was super excited to meet Mrs. Clause.

 Kai and Angelina also got to join us

 Remember at the beginning of the month how we went to the mall and had Cookies with Santa? Well each kid was given a gift and in that gift was a coupon for a FREE picture with Santa, well we finally made it back to the mall to cash in on our free visit.

Your probably wondering what Ashley thinks of all these Santa svisits and if we are ruining the magic by seeing him so often.  Well here is what we have told her.  Santa is very busy this time of year, he makes his list and checks it twice and he has lots of toys to make before Christmas.  Santa doesn't have time to be at every mall, library, parade, etc all day long.  So Santa sends his elves to visit with the children.  Now, every now and then the "Real" Santa will come down and make a special visit.  Ashley truly believes that the Santa that came to our house was the "real" Santa.  =)

Cookie Decorating Party

Your family is invited to join the festivities as we celebrate the season with an evening of friends, food, fun, cookies and of course SANTA!!

We had a potluck cookie decorating party last week with a few of Ashley's close friends.  We started the evening with some crafts, then ate a yummy dinner, decorated some sugar cookies and the kids were lucky enough to get a visit from Santa Clause!!

 Craft time

 Who can be at the door? SANTA!!!

 Santa was so AWESOME, he first talked to kids about the real reason we celebrate Christmas...the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ!!  Not about Santa, but about Jesus, so cool, he told the kids the whole Christmas Story and they really enjoyed that.

 He then called each kid up and talked to them all about what they have been up to this year, with the help of the moms and dads Santa had a list of the good as well as the bad the kids have been up to, each kid was surprised by that.  

 Dan got called up too...because he was on the Naughty list for leaving his laundry on the floor.  He was given a lump of coal, which all the kids thought was hilarious!

 Since our visit with Santa, Dan has been much better about picking his clothes up off the floor.  =}

 Santa then handed out presents to all the kids, they were in heaven to have gotten so many cool things.

 Ashley, Cailee and Michaela = Best Buds!

 We of course took tons of pictures

This was most of the kids.

We had such a great time and we hope our guests did too, we hope we can make this an annual tradition.