Christmas Time is here Again

It started off with our Ward Christmas Par-tay! We are fairly new to our ward but we were welcomed with open arms. We had a special visitor at the end of the party. I'm so glad he came. I like to get a picture of each of my children with him each year.

James was not liking it one bit!

 Jonas did fairly well

 Andie seemed a bit timid at first

 Ally knew what she wanted and didn't waste any time

James just cried a bit, Jonas didn’t ask for anything, Andrea wants a girl video game (Good luck with that one Santa), and Ally asked for something from Australia.

 Then a few days later we visited the Christmas Village near the Court House. They wrote and mailed their letters to Santa, because telling him wasn't enough and they get letters back from him this way.

 They were bundled up nice and warm. Rice bags, blankets, hats, coats, etc.

 Today we put up the lights on the house. I do not like doing this. I’m not so great with heights but with my girls holding onto the old rickety ladder we got it done. It’s not as fancy as other houses but we’re satisfied!

We put up the tree the day after Thanksgiving….and the day after that too. You see, I need to put each branch on individually. It’s annoying but it works well because then I can weave the lights on easier. I like lots of lights. Usually I put on 8 strands of 100. This year we got it all out and found that absolutely none of the 800 lights worked. I was frustrated, the girls were on the verge of crying because we couldn’t put up the tree until the lights worked. My dad has a cool toy. It’s this  It works amazingly well. With it I got 5 strands and 2 half-strands to work. I combined the two half strands to make one full strand. But I could not, for the life of me, get the other 2 to work. My mom had extra so she gave me a strand. So I was able to have 700 lights. Good enough. It took two days to get it all done, darn lights, but it was worth it.