Ugly Sweaters and Gingerbread!

It's not the holidays without fun traditions!  We do a few around here, which I will get to.  Like I mentioned in my last post, we did a service each day leading up to Christmas.  Here are some more service pictures and some holiday fun pictures!

We visited our neighbor Elza.  We need to see him more often!


One night the girls rode in the town Christmas parade.  It was SO cold out!




That same night as the parade, we hosted our annual ugly sweater party.  It was so fun! Lots of people came, and they brought lots of yummy food.  We did a hot chocolate bar again. 


We also do a white elephant gift exchange which is really fun.  Some gifts are nice, some are corny, and some are regifted gifts! Last year I opened a gift that had a baby bottle and a pregnancy test.  Our friend Chris picked that gift.  And surprisingly, someone stole it from him!  (As part of the game...)








This couple won the best "ugly sweater". 


Here are Lee and I in our finest!  We found a goldmine of Christmas sweaters at our local thrift store last year and bought a few to stock up!


The kids look forward to the ugly sweater party as much as we do...and they don't even come!  They do get to stay upstairs, eat treats and watch a movie.  We pay them to "babysit" themselves.  They like that part too. I think it's so cute seeing Elden in his robe!  Reminds me of an English fellow in his library.


Another special treat in December was going to the temple with Darrell, Stacie, Lois and Jeff!  And of course Lee.  All of our kids are old enough, and we live the right distance, that we can do this now.  It was awesome!  Later that afternoon we went downtown Baltimore to the Cake Boss place.  It was fun looking around and Darrell treated me to a cupcake!  Yum!




That evening at Lois' we did gingerbread houses.  This year we split it up.  She did the gingerbread and I did the frosting.  I brought candy too.  It was a win, win in my book!






















And if the day couldn't get better, it did!  We also did a party for Blake.  He turned 6 the day before.  So glad we could celebrate with him.


A service I did for Lois was wash her dishes, which in and of itself is very easy.  It was tricky this time around because their hot water heater wasn't working.  Lee and I heated several pots of hot water to wash and rinse the dishes.  With all the extra people at her house I wanted to help her out and she was very grateful!


We ended the evening with some sparkle and looked at the lights at the Washington DC Temple Visitors' Center.  So pretty!  LOVE Christmas lights!














Oh, I guess technically we ended the night with a stop at the mall. 




Clark and his house before he ate too much of it. 


Shanna and Elden played a game Cal created the next night.  So cute. 

#LIGHTtheWORLD

Right after Thanksgiving we jumped into the wonderful Christmas season.  I wish it were longer, it goes by so quickly!  This year my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, encouraged us to do a service each day, leading up to Christmas, and use the hashtag, #LIGHTtheWORLD when posting on social media. There were a few service things I wanted to do anyway, and it was a great experience for our family.  I posted everyday about what service we did--hopefully people weren't annoyed. It was a good way for me to document our 25 days of service too.  I don't have all of the service activities on here, but we did something everyday!  Sometimes a day had a couple of service opportunities.  Something that helped was that I was already done Christmas shopping.  I love shopping, which helps, but it was great to have Christmas shopping pretty much done by December 1.  I didn't get everything wrapped by then, but I did have a few things shipped and everything purchased.  I am hoping to have an even better head start next year!

Our very first service was to ring the bell for the Salvation Army.  The set-up is pretty sweet as it's indoors!






This isn't a service, but we loved doing the advent calendar that Lois made for me last Christmas. 


We purchased some items for a refugee family that my friend Brittany was working with.  The family recently moved into a house and needed some supplies. 


One day after school Cal beat me home.  He said he fell asleep on the front porch, poor kid. 


We raked a couple of times in December. My kids get pretty excited to rake because we don't have any trees.  Well, we have one small apple tree.












A little thing I did for the cub scouts was wrap their pinewood derby cars, and gave them a candy cane.  I also gave them a second candy cane to give to someone as a Secret Santa gift.  Lee actually handed everything out for me one night at cub scouts. The boys had no idea what was in the wrapped box, and were super excited to hand out the candy cane to someone.


We did a Secret Santa run one night.  No, not going to tell what we did either!


December brings tithing settlement and we had a nice visit with the Bishop.  The kids played a catching game in the hallway while waiting.


Someone's picture of their Lego creation.


Another service we did was visit this sweet lady Mae Francis.  Lee bought the optometry practice from her husband. Both of them are in their 90s now. 


One night we wrote thank-you notes to people.




I did some prep work for my family for a "fancy" Christmas dinner.  I went through my utensils and found out which replacement items were needed.  As of right now every utensil belongs to a set!


Another Secret Santa run....


I made some holiday pillow cases one night.  Next year I want to add more to the collection. The center pillow is a Christmas red....not a dark hot pink...


We wrote other notes a different night, including our missionaries!


I guess I did a few projects this month...I also repainted this frame and matte.  We also had a new door put in, but more photos on that later. We hope you all had a wonderful time serving others this holiday season!  It a wonderful time a year celebrating our biggest gift of all, God's son, Jesus Christ.