The Hansen Family: December 2016

LOTS of pictures this month - let's dive right in...

We got our cute little tree up and decorated before December even began.

We drove through the Spanaway Lights display again - still so super cool.

CARLY TURNED 11!! She wanted to go do something fun as a family on her birthday so we opted to go bowling! Very fun.

We enjoyed a couple free kid workshops at Lowes and Home Depot this month...

And we got to be part of a Live Nativity at a really big Nativity Festival held in Tacoma - over 500 nativities on display and some really neat ones.

And we got a little snow! It was officially 3 inches and school was cancelled - sweet. That didn't happen when I was a kid in Idaho - haha. There was enough snow for the kids to build a snowman, make a snow angel, have a snowball fight and go sledding so we got our snow fun in.

Carly used some of her birthday money to buy herself some crutches to play with - she loves them! And a couple days later - our snowman was still standing! Look at all that pretty green grass too!

We enjoyed a fun Ward Christmas Party. Everyone could dress like a Who from Whoville and our Bishop just happened to have Grinch pajamas that he wore! We even got a visit from Santa, his wife, and 2 of their elves. The kids all got to perform, as well.

The last week of school before Winter Break was Spirit Week at the Elementary School. Here the girls are on Twin Day and the 3 youngest kids on Nerd Day - so fun.

Jacie, Trevor and Cameron were all chosen by their teachers to be recognized for their awesomeness at school - I'm a proud mommy! :)

We got to do some service at the Stake Campsite to help get it ready for winter - kind of hard to rake up frozen leaves, and even harder to light them on fire, as Matt discovered. :)

Colder weather has let us use our fireplace more. Matt has had fun teaching each of the kids the proper way to build a fire. This is the one that Alissa built.

And we had VISITORS!! Lane and Mallory stayed the night one night this month and they got to join us for a fun FHE where we made our own edible nativities. Mallory taught us a super cool trick of melting sugar to make super strong glue - so cool. Trevor was all over the Tootsie Roll/Whopper people - they look great. We had a lot of fun and so many creative ideas!

Jacie's sheep reminds me of something I think I've seen on Star Wars...and Cameron's kind of freaked us out - he said he had to keep stretching the baby Jesus so he would fit on top of the manger.

Carly's angel was awesome.

We also snuck in a quick game of Rummy before bed!

Matt is a trickster. His coworkers are his most recent victims. He gave this box of chocolates to the secretary. So nice of him, right? Well, he sabotaged 2 of the chocolates. He melted the chocolate off the bottom of them, filled them with the salty flavoring from a Beef Ramen packet and covered it up with more chocolate. He said she'd eaten quite a few of them then popped one of the evil ones in her mouth and chomped right down on it! Nasty! She said she will forever be nervous around chocolates now. :) She made sure to write this note on the box so other people wouldn't fall victim to his tricks.

We spent the week before Christmas making goodies every day. Our tradition is to make sugar cookies on Christmas Eve. I was inspired by my sister Teresa to create cute goody plates for our friends. We had yummy white fudge from Matt's Grandma's recipe, Santa cookies, melted snowman cookies, sugar cookies and Toffee (harder than you might think to make without burning - just sayin'). The kids wanted to ding dong ditch on every plate so we had a lot of fun with that.

On Christmas Eve, after we'd delivered the goody plates, we all opened a gift and found fun new pajamas! We gathered around the fire and read the Nativity and had a wonderful evening.

Christmas morning - our cute little line up - don't know what Matt is doing, though!

And the exciting discoveries began!

Matt's sister Kaeli had her friend crochet all these cute minion hats - awesome.

We had a great Christmas and so much love and happiness floating around - love this holiday.
And so nice to get to go to church on this holiday - these guys are all decked out in their new duds.

Our friends, the Pauls, joined us for our Christmas feast and contributed by bringing their own Roast Beast! They also gave us this funny Pie Face game - so messy but so fun!