Matchy Matchy

Before I had kids, I thought it was pretty silly when parents put their kids in matching clothes.  Then I had two boys and Enoch really wanted to dress up the same as Phinn.  Well, they were SO DARN CUTE, that for Christmas this year I bought the boys matching Sunday shirts and matching pajamas.  I bought the girls matching dresses and pajamas.  The kids put the pjs on Christmas evening and I came in the room and asked them where Freya was.  They all started laughing hysterically, because as you can see in this picture, she was sitting in Hilde's lap - totally camouflaged!

Christmas 2012

 Christmas 2012 was pretty perfect.  Hilde and Enoch came down early to sit down and watch the lights on the Christmas tree and look longingly at the stockings and presents.  At a perfectly reasonable hour they came into our room to wake us up and we all went down to start the festivities.

 We took a break to have our traditional Christmas breakfast, Ebelskivers.  This year we did three different fillings, nutella, strawberry jam and cranberry curd.  My favorite was the cranberry curd.  This year was the first year that Freya was able to enjoy them, and she loved them.  It's not hard to see why.

After a little more present opening they kids opened up a big box full of all the shipping air packs.  They had to go outside and pop them all before we could continue.  This was Dave's idea and it was SO genius.

Gingerbread Houses

A couple of weeks before Christmas Grandma Carol called and asked if it would be okay to bring over gingerbread houses for the kids to make.  Let us think about it for a minute or two....YES.  She came over after school and helped 3 very excited kiddos create their respective masterpieces.  It kept their attention for far longer than I thought, including Phinn.  The egg white frosting dried so hard that the houses all maintained their shape for weeks, although it made eating them pretty near impossible.  No worries though, we had plenty of other Christmas goodies to snack on.  We sure love this new tradition.

Festival of Lights

The Washington DC temple and visitors center does a great job of putting up Christmas lights and hosting Christmas concerts the whole month of December.  We went up one Friday night as a low-key primary activity.  It was a cold night, and Dave spent it directing traffic, but I really enjoyed the trip.  The kids were well behaved and they loved looking at the lights and the live nativity.  As a bonus, one of our friends had her camera set up to take family pictures, and they turned out awesome.  We'll have to photoshop Dave in.

Trimming the Tree

The last few years we have not scheduled a Christmas tree outing.  Whenever the mood strikes Dave, he brings us back a tree.  Sometimes the older kids go to help pick it out, but not always.  When the tree is all set up with the lights on and the star on top, the kids set to work.  Every year we open the ornaments up and are surprised at what we have.  The kids have their favorites, especially ones that remind them of a special place or have their picture on it.  This year we listened to Christmas music and ate some sugar cookies while we decorated.  After the kids were done I did some touch-up work to move some ornaments out of the reach of Freya, but all in all the kids did a great job.

We hung up the stockings with great care. Good thing we don't have plans to add anyone else to our family, we have run out of room on the mantle!

Our baby turns 1

Look who is a big girl now.  We no longer have a baby in the house, we have a one year old.  Freya celebrated her birthday on December 1st with family and a cake frosted bright pink.  She was a little tentative at first, but quickly made a huge mess while devouring the cake.  She didn't really get the present opening, but she liked playing with her new baby doll stroller, ball toy, stacking cups, and other fun things.  Mommy loved seeing all her new cute clothes.  At her check-up she weighed in the smallest of any of our children at this stage, just barely 19 pounds with a diaper on.  This is in the 25% range, and nothing to worry about at all, but most of my kids hit 20 pounds a few months earlier.  Her relative petiteness is adorable.  She was also 29 inches long and her head was 17 and half inches around.  Her two strawberry patches have stopped growing and seem to be starting to fade slightly.  She says mama and dada and takes a few steps here and there.  Freya is starting to show a lot of spunkiness.  She knows how to get and keep attention and she has smiles that will melt anyone's heart.  She hates to be confined in high chairs or grocery carts.  Going to the store with her is quite a match of wits and wills.  At Costco the other day she kept climbing out of the cart, which was going to lead to a major injury.  So I took to holding her foot down so she couldn't climb out.  She yelled bloody murder and cried and cried because I would not let her go.  Safety first little girl, it is non-negotiable.  Everyone we passed looked at her little pathetic face and started laughing or saying, "oh, how cute".  She will only be cute when crying for so long, but right now, we find her just about perfect.  Happy birthday baby girl!