Holiday Happenings

Such a busy time of year!  We got a Christmas Advent Calendar from Grandma Eccles - each day taught us about a gift from our Heavenly Father that we had to be grateful for.  And we got started early on Daddy's Christmas Angels gift - this year we choose to help out fellow Military Families through the Base Chapel.

One weekend we discovered Dylan finally had his first loose tooth.  So on Sunday after church (while everyone else was waiting for me to be done and come out to the car) they were helping and encouraging him to get it out.  Apparently Tyler decided to show him - we didn't even know Tyler had a loose tooth - but he yanked one out (?!?) and then so did Dylan.  So both of them had a visit from the Tooth Fairy that night...

Then not many days later Dylan pulled out his 2nd tooth.  He happily sang the song "All I Want For Christmas Are My Two Front Teeth"!

We've never had a fake Christmas Tree.  Never wanted one.  But we got a late start on decorating this year.  And we knew we'd be leaving on Christmas day.  And I got a gorgeous 9 1/2 foot tree for $20 at the Base Thrift Shop... so... it just was meant to be this year.  Brynn was very disappointed and kept informing us this was NOT going to be a normal thing.

One day Tyler found the perfect sticks to make a bow and arrow... that was creative thinking so I helped him.  The next thing I knew I was making them for all of my kids plus some extra kiddos in the neighborhood.  They had fun with them.

I decided to come up with a better way to tape our Christmas Cards to the wall... probably should have taken a picture after it was full... oops...

Grandma Eccles came for a visit the 2nd weekend in December.  She got in Thursday night.  Friday morning we went to the school to see Brynn's Rhythems Club holiday performance. 

 (videos to come)

Then I let all the kids get out of school early for the day when we picked Kate up from preschool.  We wrapped and delivered our Christmas Angel presents...

Oops... jumping around a little... then this week I got to go see the kindergarten's holiday performance...

(videos hopefully to come)

And Kate had a holiday book exchange for playgroup...

 I also stopped by her classroom and they were decorating Christmas Trees...

 The bear got managed to get into our trashcan AGAIN and somehow Grandma and Brynn were on clean up duty while the rest of us decorated the outside of the house...

Random...

 Grandma loves to build Gingerbread Houses (me not so much) so we bought some kits to do with her...

Dylan helping cook cheesy eggs (one of the like 5 meals he will actually eat)...