December Activities

I went all out with as many Christmas activities as I could this year! I say I do it for the kids, but really I love it too. :-) The whole season is just so magical and I LOVE reliving all the kid magic through my own kids. They make everything so much more fun.

We always go see the Mesa Temple lights. I always try to do this early in the season because I think being at the temple and enjoying one of our oldest family Christmas traditions is such a good way to really get into the Christmas spirit.

Making a gingerbread house! Yes, I buy the pre made one. Best things ever. Seriously. Josh helped a little with the decorating but was pretty much just interested in eating the candy and frosting. I caught him a couple times trying to sneak up the piano to steal candies.

Cute Christmas outfits/accessories! Yes yes yes!

Christmas cookies! SO much dough gets eaten but I guess that's half (or more than half) the fun. ;-)

We went to a Christmas party of someone we barely knew (ha! but I assure you we did actually get invited!) and they had the BEST SANTA EVER! He was SO nice and the kids were on Cloud 9 after meeting him.

My amazing friend McKenzie hosted a Christmas party for some of our good couple friends and it was so beautiful. She always throws the best parties! This is her version of a "small, just-whatever, casual thing" by the way.  ;-)

Love these ladies so much! (Lauren, Kelcie, Emily, me, McKenzie, and Lacey) They are some of the best friends I've made in Gilbert.

Kate had her Christmas dance recital!!! She'd practiced a ton so that even her brothers knew a lot of the dance. Haha! Anyway, she did so awesome and was so so cute to watch. She was so excited the second her dance ended that she just started jumping around with the biggest smile on her face. :-) She danced to "Mistletoe and Holly." And she LOVED that Michael gave her flowers at the end.

Putting on the final touches before her performance-

Oh, and we had a lot of fun with Hermey this month. (Our Elf on the Shelf.) The kids had SUCH a blast finding him every morning.... and our elf wasn't even that creative. All the did was hide. (There are lots of elves that will hide elaborately or bring gifts.)

We sure love Christmas stuff!

The Polar Express

Two years ago we went on the Polar Express, which is the Grand Canyon Express that they transform into the Polar Express for a couple months at Christmastime. It was such a blast and even though the kids were little, (Kate was almost 2 and Matthew was 3) we all enjoyed it and I knew we'd be back. This year I decided it was the perfect time to go because Matthew and Kate are at that completely magical-at-holidays age. (Kate is almost 4 and Matthew is 5.) Josh was a little too young to fully get it, but I knew he'd like it too. So, even though it's expensive, we splurged and booked our Polar Express experience for late November. (Right before Thanksgiving.)

I was SO EXCITED. We went on a Friday, but Michael was able to get off work early so that we could give ourselves plenty of time to get to Williams, which is where you board the train. Williams is the cutest little town just past Flagstaff and one of my favorite things about doing the Polar Express is getting to stop for dinner there. We ate at Pine Country, an adorable diner with good food and absolutely delicious pies. I was SO bummed that Josh hadn't napped at all on the way up but he was in pretty good spirits once we got out of the car and got some yummy food in our bellies!

This dutch apple pie was straight from heaven.

And then we headed to the train station! They have lots of elves walking around saying hi to all the kids. They also had some characters from the book/movie walking around. We'd read the book and watched the movie a TON before we went up there, so the kids were so excited to see the movie come to life.

Tickets!

Boarded!

Once the train took off, the staff (dressed up like the characters in the book) danced and sang, brought us cookies and hot chocolate, (the cookies are delicious but for some reason the hot chocolate is always nasty) and read the book. Matthew and Kate were soaking up every second. Josh did pretty okay, though he was getting pretty antsy. Once we got to the "North Pole" we all enjoyed checking out the lights and driving by Santa on his sleigh..... then the train started going back the other way, and when we passed the sleigh, Santa wasn't in it. ;-)

On the way back we all sang Christmas carols. We were one of the very last cars for Santa to get to since we were at the front of the train. Matthew and Kate were SO excited and Matthew kept his eyes on the door, waiting for Santa to come. Joshua had pretty much turned into a total mess at this point, flailing and crying. That whole no-nap thing had really caught up to him by then. Luckily the noise of the singing/excited passengers drowned him out a bit so that he didn't bother anyone else too much. :)

Here they are catching their first glimpse of Santa!

Santa was super friendly and gave each of the kids a bell. He gave one to me and Michael too, which was nice so that I could make it into an ornament keepsake. The kids all loved Santa. Even Josh calmed down for about 10 seconds when Santa handed him his bell. Ha!

We got back to the train station and then got back into the car for our drive home. We'd considered staying the night in Flagstaff, but there wasn't much snow so the only reason we'd stay longer would be to avoid the drive one more night. That seemed like a waste of money, especially since Kate and Josh do NOT do well sharing one big room with the family. :-) The drive home was slightly miserable since Josh is not a good car seat sleeper, but we did get some quiet moments so that was nice. :-)

Anyway, it was SUCH a fun thing to do and I'm so glad we did it at such a magical age for Kate and Matthew. Totally worth it!