Carrots, Castles & Christmas Cards

G's Christmas party was today, and I was in charge of the games.  I bought two XXL white shirts, 2 dozen balloons, carrots and scarves, and the kids turned into snowmen.  I thought they'd love it.  They really just wanted to snowball fight with the balloons.
Look at that cute carrot nose.

He makes a handsome snowman. Georgia & G.

 Snowball (marshmallows) on spoons were our second game, but all the kids wanted to do was to eat them. Five second rule.

 Decorating Rice Krispie treats. G picked the angel cookie cutter.

 G's recital.  He sang Twinkle Twinkle Christmas Star and Away in a Manger.  And he played with Papa Smurf almost the whole time.  Of course.

For lunch this week, I took the kids to Crown Center to visit Daddy.  They loved the Gingerbread Village.

 We watched chocolate fly in the air and bought some eggnog flavored fudge for Daddy.

 Then we walked the Link to Union Station and saw the holiday trains.

 We went on our annual neighborhood sleigh ride and sang A LOT of Jingle Bells.  L loved the sparkly red hooves.

 Lorelei brought along her cabbage patch doll.

 It was a wee bit stinky. We were in the front row.  The kids couldn't stop gagging and covering their noses :o)

 Love that little elf!

 Their third visit with Santa Claus.  We love seeing our neighborhood lights--part of our neighborhood becomes "Christmas Place" and lights up the night.  It's gorgeous.  We also drove to Longview Lake two nights ago, all in our pajamas.

 But our best times are always at home.  Daddy plays carols on the piano and Mommy and the kids love to sing along.  I love singing ones they don't hear on the radio, like Jeanette Isabella and Fum Fum Fum and Good King Wenceslas.  We play a lot of games, the kids do a ton of art projects, and we have dinner with candlelight and our favorite holiday CDs--Sarah Groves, King's College Choir, Loreena McKennitt, Sarah McLachlan, Celtic Woman, Josh Groban, Time Life, Glee.  Mommy spent a day cleaning the house top to bottom, while the kids made a mess with all the couch cushions and occupied themselves for hours building castle forts and leaping across the moat.

 And one night when the kids were "sleeping," I went up the stairs to bed to find this in the hall:

 All of our nativity figures were on the floor, surrounding the baby Jesus.

 They adore Him.

 And the tree is coming together, topped off by Gryffy's star.  We love Christmas cards.  The kids tear them open and can't wait to see who they're from.

And this year's Christmas cards have been sent... twice.  The "top secret" stamped manila envelopes needed extra postage, so they all got sent back for an extra stamp each. Humbug. But hey, at least we're doing our part to save the postal service from tanking.