December fun

December was a fun month. We started the celebrations by going to the "Old Dutch Store" to see Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet (Black Pete). The kids were very excited by the idea of seeing them but once we got there they were quite shy. We had a fun time though and ended up buying a bunch of dutch treats.
I even got to go to Elizabeth's class later in the week to tell them about Holland and Sinterklaas. Elizabeth has a little girl in her class who's mom is also dutch and she served her mission in Holland and so we did the presentation together.


To start off the Christmas celebrations we took the kids to a live nativity in Alpine. It's called “A Walk to Bethlehem". We parked the car in a church parking lot and from there we took a hay wagon ride to the location of the nativity. Everyone was dressed up like the people in the olden days. There were real camels, sheep and other animals. There were even soldiers on horses riding around. Elizabeth was very reverent when she saw "Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus". We had a very special moment watching them as we were the only ones there for a few minutes with no other people around us. There was a strong spirit and it was a great way to teach the children the real meaning of Christmas.

On the hay ride back to the car.

I remembered that I still had a gingerbread train in the house from a few years ago so I thought it would be fun to decorate that one this year instead of buying one. Well when I opened the box it had quite the smell and we realized it had gone rancid. The kids were quite disappointed but Bruce came to the rescue and quickly ran to the store to buy a gingerbread house. When he came home and we opened the new one we found out the this one had some "structural damage" and the kids (especially Elizabeth) were quite upset. At this point I did not want to return it and get a new that night one so we postponed the activity to the following night. This time I got the gingerbread village which allowed the kids to decorate their own little houses instead of sharing one. They both had fun decorating (and eating) the houses.

Elizabeth dressed up like Mary with "baby Jesus".

We decided to give the kids their Christmas pyama's for Sinterklaas (quite practical ;)) so they could enjoy them throughout the whole month of December.

Elizabeth just adores Emily.

Elizabeth had a special Christmas sing program at school and had so much fun singing all her songs.

Some snow fun.

Here are some shots from Christmas morning. It was fun and relaxing and the kids really seemed to enjoy their presents. I made the kids pyama's with matching pillow cases and gave them to them on Christmas Eve. They loved them. Thomas would not let go of his pillow that night and the following morning. He dragged it around the house and insisted on wearing his pyama's and bring his pillow to Babi and Grandpa's house on Christmas day (and no I did not let him wear it during the day but let him bring them for later that night).
I even made Emily some pyama bottoms that matched Elizabeth's.