Christmas Joy

The last few weeks have been full of Christmas celebrations and decorations!  I love this time of year!!  The first weekend in December was our ward Christmas party.  My dear friend Annie was in charge of it, and it turned out so amazing!  Porter even got to sport his new Christmas jammies.  There has never been anything cuter!

It was an ugly sweater party, but our sweaters are hidden in this pictures.  Thanks Ryan and Kara for letting us borrow them!

Our Christmas tree is up and it smells divine!  Porter loves the lights, and luckily he has left the tree alone.  Next year will be a different story I am sure!

I have been watching the Holiday Baking Championship on the Food Network, and I felt inspired to do gingerbread house this year.  James suggested we do the whole thing ourselves so away we went!  It was a 3-night process, but the finish product is quite good if I do say so myself!

He wears his flour well!

Night 1 was making and baking the gingerbread.  Night 2 was construction and most of the decorating.  Night 3 was all the finishing touches.  This plus our real Christmas tree makes our house smell extra yummy Christmasey!

Piping is not my bag!  Pun intended!

The finished product!

One night I ran about 5-6 errands after work which is a lot to cram into a short time frame!  At one point Porter did this...

I thought I had worn him out.  He stayed like that for quite a while, so finally I peeked under to see if he was really asleep (because that would be about as unlikely for Porter than anything known to mankind).  Turns out he was just looking down at the floor or his feet or something.  I knew he wouldn't fall asleep like this!

I made a stocking for Porter to match mine and James'.  It's official, we can't name any future children with names longer than 6 letters.

We drove by a crazy lights spectacular house in Alpine one night.  I could never get a good picture of everything all lit up at once, but you get the idea.  It was all set to music and pretty fun!  It started giving me sensory overload by the end.  I thought I was going to barf.  Getting pretty old, guys!

Then just this last weekend, we met up with the Cosby's downtown to look at the lights.  It was lots of fun!  We had dinner at the food court at City Creek, and then headed over to Temple Square.  It is always so stunning!

Socks for gloves!  We got soooo many comments about how cute Porter is.  I know, people, I know!  I can't get over it myself!

Porter did awesome until we stopped to watch the nativity thing.  Then he was pretty much done.  He screamed the whole way back to the car.  I sat in the back and fed him a bottle and passed right out.
This last Friday, I decided James and I should take the day off and do some holiday baking.  I scheduled an eye doctor's appointment so I could use my last sick day of the year, and we were set.  It was really fun and so yummy!  I hope this becomes a tradition!  We did the baking at James' parent's house for many reasons, but mostly because we wanted his mom's expertise and she has a double oven...and way more room than we do!  Here is the final products...a pan of fudge, 100+ gingerbread boys, and 9 tea rings.  I can't wait to deliver them all to our friends and neighbors!

We may have had one mishap which was my fault.  We still baked them and gave them away...sorry friends! The floor was clean!

 

 That night we had all my nieces and nephews over because we had agreed to babysit while Amy and Dan went to see Star Wars and while Kara and Ryan did some painting in their new hours.  They all love Nana and Papa's house, so we thought it would be so fun to have them come there.  They were in heaven of course!

 

Within minutes of starting the movie, this was Jack.  Poor kid wasn't feeling 100%!  He insisted on staying in the bean bags though.

Last night James and I got to go to the Motab Christmas concert!  I love these and always feel so lucky when I get to go to them!  We had awesome seats too!  It was a little hairy getting downtown and parked and into the Conference Center, but in the end we make it and it was delightful!

 

 I think we are ready for the big day now...just 5 days away!  Sometimes I feel like I get lost in the present buying, baking, decorating, wrapping, parties, food, etc and forget the true meaning of Christmas.  I've tried to take moments this year to let the real meaning sink in.  Being the first Christmas with a child has sure helped!  I have thought a lot about Mary and what she must have gone through that night that Christ was born.  I hope Heavenly Father somehow gave her a spiritual epidural! Haha!  No, but in all seriousness, she was an amazing woman and Joseph was an amazing man!  I love my Savior so much!