December Activities

Now that Leah is getting bigger and can appreciate and enjoy the Christmas season even more, I tried to do more things with her this year to make it fun and special. One fun thing was going caroling with some of our Putnam family. We got in the car and drove from house to house. She didn't quite get what was going on, but was very excited for the yummy treats and hot chocolate that were waiting for us back at Grandma and Grandpa Putnam's house. Everyone had a great time and we all agreed that we should do it again next year. Here's a picture of Leah enjoying cookies with Kynee and Kaylynn.

Another fun thing was getting invited to a gingerbread cookie decorating party at our neighbor's house. Our wonderful neighbor, Bonnie, read the kids the story of the gingerbread man and then had big cookies for each of the kids to decorate. Leah LOVED this activity! The other kids lost interest and went to play with toys, but Leah just kept decorating. I think her cookie had more sprinkles and frosting than anyone else's.

One day, we got quite a bit of snow. So we got bundled up and went outside to play in it. She thought being out in the snow was pretty fun. But she kept putting her hands down in the snow. And needless to say it wasn't long before her hands were too cold and she was ready to go back inside.

She even wanted to try to do some shoveling. But the only place to shovel was the grass. And the snow was so heavy, she could hardly get the shovel to move. Of course, we had to end the adventure with some hot chocolate. The whole adventure (hot chocolate included) took less than a half hour, which was fine with me.

We even made sugar cookies one night. I let her help a little with putting ingredients in the mixer and cutting the cookies out. When we got to the end, I let her play with the extra dough and rolling pin. She thought that was great and had a grand time getting getting all dirty from the flour.

The Sunday before Christmas, Norma, Brian, William and Sierra came over for dinner. We had a delicious spread of Mexican food including, enchiladas, burritos, rice, beans, chips, salsa and guacamole. And for dessert, we frosted some sugar cookies.

Norma's family had our family for the sibling gift exchange this year. So they brought over our gifts to see us open them.

Leah was so excited to open the pomegranate that they got for us! She loved showing it off for the camera.

In addition to the pomegranate and a game our family wanted, they found a book all about the TV show MASH for Ross, and some yummy chocolate treats.

We did some other fun activities that I don't have pictures of, like going to a Utah Valley Handbell Choir concert and to the "Festival of Lights" in Spanish Fork.

Leah loved decorating our Christmas tree and showed it off for anyone who came to visit. She also loved counting down the days to Christmas with the advent calendar Grandma Putnam made for me. She was so excited every day to put a little ornament on the tree and talked about how excited she was that Santa was coming after all the ornaments were on the tree.

We watched Christmas movies and TV shows. Leah's favorite by far was "Mickey Saves Santa." I'm not sure I can count how many times she watched it.

We read Christmas stories together a lot. Leah's favorite was Dr. Seuss's "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." She now has most of the story memorized. We also read stories about the birth of Jesus and talked a lot about how Christmas is when we celebrate Jesus's birthday. And every night Leah requested that we sing "Away in a Manger" as our bedtime song. She also wanted to sing "Jingle Bells" every chance she could, especially if she had a bell to ring while she sang it.

One thing we didn't get to do in December that I wish we would have was a visit to Temple Square to see the lights and to City Creek Center to see the candy displays. Ross got to go to Temple Square with the youth for mutual, but Leah and I missed out on that.