This Christmas has been the busiest season for us in a long time. Our challenge this year was to make the Christmas season less stressful, more fun and heartfelt, and more Christ Centered.
Despite a little hiccup with some family members that occurred early December, we were still able to achieve our goal to have a memorable Christmas.
Here are the highlights for our Christmas Season 2012:
We kicked off the Christmas season by having our annual Christmas party. It is our way of showing our appreciation for our friends. We have a big spread of appetizers and we had our guests bring the desserts.
We don't have a big home, so we invited only three couples. RM loves to entertain and wanted to invited a few more couples- I convinced him to cut the guest list by half.
We provided games and prizes. It was a fun night!
We look forward to having another Christmas party next year in a bigger house!
You absolutely cannot let the Christmas season pass with out decorating sugar cookies! I wanted to decorate the cookies the "correct way" and looked at many recipes and tips on how to decorate a sugar cookie with royal icing. RM and I went to a crafts store and bought all the necessary tools.
RM appointed himself "Head of Quality Control". Anytime a cookie had edges that looked too brown- he eats them.
We invited the missionaries and two of my nieces for dinner and cookie decorating. It was one of the sister missionaries birthday, so in addition to the cookies we ate- I made giant vanilla cupcakes for Sister Vaughn's birthday.
The results of our decorating. I think I only managed to decorate four cookies. It's a lot of work having a sugar cookie decorating party!
My 11 year old niece Suliana on the left and my 18 year old niece Vanessa on the right. After the end of the evening they were already talking about next year's cookie decorating party.
RM gave me an early Christmas present: A Kitchen Aid Mixer. It made baking a lot easier, which makes me wonder why I didn't get this useful gadget a long time ago.
My first Caramel apple pies. RM took these pies to his home teaching families.
We have many musically talented members in the Folsom Stake Ward. Every year the stake puts together a Sing along Christmas Musical. It's one event that RM and I try to attend every year.
The Christmas season isn't complete without a trip to Apple Hill for lunch and fresh apple juice. (It took twenty years for us to finally get Moe to take a picture with Santa....better late than never)
We bought a couple of jugs of apple juice for Moe. He plans taking a few them back with him to the Bay Area.
Our family loves music and theater especially around Christmas.
Instead of going to S.F. for a concert, we went to a Christmas music concert at the Folsom Three Stages.
We loved the Christmas goodies we received from friends.
And the Christmas goodies kept coming in.
I think home baked goods make the best type of Christmas presents.
Lunch and dessert at the Cheesecake Factory. My plan to stick only to eating salad went down the drain when I saw a peppermint bark cheesecake as an option. And then I took a few bites of RM's caramel cheesecake and then another few bites out of Moe's cookies and cream cheesecake.
I never did finish my salad.
With only a few days before Christmas, we finally found some time to decorate Gingerbread houses - a tradition that we stopped several years ago
until Moe decided we should start that tradition again.
RM and Moe found an innovative way for the frosting to dry up quickly.
The walls kept falling down. So RM's solution was to use Automotive Glue to keep the house together. This was definitely not an edible Gingerbread House.
The glue managed to keep Moe's house together.....
.....for only a few seconds before it all started tumbling down.
We assumed that RM's gingerbread house would start to fall apart as Moe's did.
And it never fell apart!
RM thought at that moment it was a great gospel teaching moment about building your house on a solid spiritual foundation.
I told RM to hold on to that thought for another day....our stomachs was more interested in getting fed than our spirits.
We did alot this Christmas season. And I haven't blogged about our Christmas Eve or Christmas Day yet!
1 comment:
Looks like a great Christmas! I am so hungry!
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