Christmastime!

We had a great Christmas with family! My brother, Steve, and his family came to visit my parents and us for a week.  Due to COVID, we mostly stayed at our houses and didn't have many specific plans for the week, which was relaxing. We did take the kids outside when the weather was nice, and they jumped on the trampoline in our backyard at ton.

We enjoyed playing games, doing puzzles, and catching up on life.

We took the kids to one of our favorite playgrounds at Chesapeake City Park. Steve and Sheila's daughter, Meera, is 6 years old and their son, Rowan, is 2 years old. Our girls LOVED playing with them all week!

Some excited kids on Christmas morning! Rowan isn't really into posing for the camera - heh!

The girls got to decorate and eat snowman cupcakes

My mom treated Hallie and Meera to a makeover with real makeup!

So fancy!

One evening, we introduced the kids to "pop its" firecrackers. They're tiny pouches of powder that make a loud pop and bright spark when you throw them to the ground.

We also took them on a walk through our neighborhood to see some of the best Christmas decorations.

Just before they left to go back to Boston, we spent the day at Hunt Club Farm.

It's a very hands-on farm, and the girls loved getting to go inside the chicken coop and catch the hens.

Rowan enjoyed the goat pen much more than the chicken coop. He thought it was hilarious that the goats licked the feed right out of his hand.

They were cute, but mischievous. Every time the gate was opened, a few of them tried to make a run for it, and they were hard to corral back into their pen!

We all had a blast in the aviary, which was full of colorful parakeets. 

The farm sold birdseed on a stick, so you could attract the birds. This was the first time Hallie held onto her stick to let the birds eat the seed, without freaking out and throwing it. 

Rowan was still in the “freaking out about birds” stage, but he enjoyed them if they didn't move too much.

Each of the kids got a pony ride at the farm, too.

Rowan and his pony were too cute to handle!

There was a brand-new "tree walk" feature with climbing structures, bridges, rope walks, and slides built into the trees.

We miss Steve, Sheila, Meera, and Rowan and are so happy they were able to come to Virginia this Christmas!

We also celebrated Christmas with Dan's side of the family. They traditionally gather on Christmas Eve to eat Chinese food for dinner, and we drove to Williamsburg to join them that evening.

The Jester clan, along with the King family, who are longtime family friends. 

A few days after Christmas, we gathered again with the Jesters to exchange Christmas gifts. The kids distributed the gifts and made an enormous mess unwrapping their presents, while Dan's dad tried his best to collect all the trash before we were buried in it.

The girls *kind of* liked their gifts. Ha ha!

The Jester family at Christmastime. We were really missing Dan's sister, Robin, and her family. But we’re SO grateful that everyone was healthy this year. After last Christmas when Dan’s dad was in the hospital with COVID, we don’t take that blessing for granted!

December Fun

We kicked off December by celebrating Dan's birthday! His parents and my parents joined us that evening for dinner at Cheesecake Factory.

There were beautiful Christmas decorations in Virginia Beach Towne Center, so we walked around to check them out for a little while.

We sure do love this man!

A couple of days later, my parents celebrated their 50th anniversary! We had celebrated with them in July with my brother, Steve's, family in Cape Cod. We're incredibly thankful for their relationship and example of godly service and love.

I'm glad they had a lunch date to celebrate, because we had unintentionally asked them to babysit the girls that night. On. their. 50th. anniversary. We realized our mistake the day before, and tried to back out, but they insisted over and over that it was fine. So they took our girls to a "Night in Bethlehem" themed church event where they kneaded and baked bread, crafted clay sculptures, stamped leather, wrote in Hebrew, and did other activities similar to those in biblical times. I'm sure it was very romantic. Ha! Dan and I are so thankful they love us and our girls.

Emma's 3rd grade class read the novel, "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" this semester and celebrated Narnia Day right after Thanksgiving break. They were greeted by this lamppost and forest scene outside their classroom door.

The kids could dress up as characters from the book, and Emma dressed as Aslan the lion. The day was filled with themed crafts and activities. 

The highlight for all the 3rd graders was getting to practice archery with real bows and arrows! Emma got to practice quite a few times and couldn't quite get her arrow all the way to the target, until Dan came along and gave her some instruction. Then she hit the target!

Emma's class on Narnia Day with their teacher, Mrs. Fox.  The best costume award goes to the girl on the left who dressed as "the wardrobe." Made my day! 

My parents invited us to join them at Sweethaven Lavender Farm in Williamsburg one day. They were meeting friends there, and thought we'd enjoy it, too.

It was the most beautiful farm we'd ever visited.

They had nice settings for Christmas pictures. We also enjoyed their farm animal petting area, walking to a nearby lake, taking a wagon ride, and visiting their quaint gift shop.

Since we were in Williamsburg, we went to Dan's parents' house after we left the farm.

The Jesters joined us for a dinner party celebrating Dan's birthday and my parents' anniversary.

Hallie loves crafts, and she got to experience her first woodworking project in Grandpa's shop that afternoon before dinner.

She's surprisingly patient and adept at following directions for a 5-year-old!

The end product was this cute little wooden car carrying a Christmas tree. It was a craft set I picked up from Home Depot. Grandpa even helped her spray paint the tree green. We were supposed to paint the car brown and then apply the stickers on the sides, but Hallie opted to use markers to color it her favorite colors instead. 

A coworker gave me three tickets to a Tidewater Winds concert. Dan and I took Emma, and we really enjoyed their jazzy renditions of familiar Christmas carols. Emma was a little disappointed that there wasn't any dancing to go with the music, but she enjoyed it overall.

The ladies at work have an annual Christmas brunch, and some of us wore our festive or ugly sweaters for the occasion. There were about 20 ladies participating, the food was delicious, and we played a gift exchange game. There was plenty of leftover food to share with the men in the office after our party.

Dan and I took the girls to Busch Gardens Christmas Town one evening in December. The night didn't go exactly as planned, since there were huge crowds and long lines, then a heavy rainstorm rained us out earlier than we hoped. But we did enjoy a few hours of shows and the girls' favorite rides before the storm came through. 

Later that week, I used my annual pass to visit Christmas Town again to see a couple of the shows we had missed. I took my time walking through the entire park and snapped some photos of their amazing decorations!

Hallie's Kindergarten class had their Christmas performance at school. Hallie's class was a flock of sheep that looked like mice. They did a great job!

Hallie was the most adorable sheep-mouse of all!

The girls had class parties on the last day of school before Christmas break. I'm the room mom for Emma's class, so I played a part in coordinating food and crafts for her class. 

I made sure to stop by Hallie's classroom a couple of times to see what she was up to. We took photo booth pictures together while I was there.

Each of the girls had a "Secret Angel" gift exchange with their classmates, and they both received cute stuffed animals from a mystery friend who was revealed after they opened their gift.

The first weekend of Christmas break, we picked up Dan's parents and drove to Washington DC to visit the Gaylord Resort. We'd heard about their indoor decorations, Christmas village, and family-friendly activities, and thought it would be worth checking out. It wasn't all it was cracked up to be, in my opinion, but we made the best of it.  It was extremely crowded, because there was a cheerleading competition and at least one other private party there that evening.  The resort's Christmas activities were in different sections of the huge building, and we had to wade through crowds of young cheerleaders to get from one area to another. They charged extra money for everything once you were there, and one performance that we should've been able to enjoy for free from a balcony view was obstructed by the private party that had booked the balcony area during that time.  I bought a Snoopy scavenger hunt booklet for the girls, but it was poorly worded and the Snoopy figures we were trying to find were hidden in obscure places all around the 14-story building. After an hour we gave up on the hunt, but the employee awarded the girls with prizes anyway.

Based on our experience I wouldn't make the drive to go back there again, but there were three big highlights to the event: 

1) Spending time with Dan's parents

2) The super fun indoor ice sledding hill that we bought tickets to ride. The girls were troopers about dragging their tubes up the ramp and loved sliding down the fast, short slope! We rode it 4 times and had a blast.

3) The nighttime music and laser light show was very well done, and it was easy to see and enjoy from all vantage points. 

A week after we visited the Gaylord resort, Dan and I had a date and drove to Washington DC again to go to the Van Gogh Experience art show.

There was a museum area that described Van Gogh's short and depressing life, his style as an artist, and his most famous works.

The main attraction at the art show was a large room with chairs and cushions where you could sit and listen to music interspersed with descriptions about Van Gogh's life while they showed huge projections of the art he painted during those periods of his life. The music soundtrack was fantastic and they brought elements of the art to life by making the stars twinkle, the wind blow, flowers bloom, boats float across the water, etc.

Every wall of the huge room, and even the floor at times, was filled with art! So we felt like we were inside a moving painting. The entire "immersion" experience lasted around 40 minutes, and you were welcome to linger or leave whenever you wanted. We both enjoyed it, and especially loved having the day together.

I have to give props to Dan for taking on our family's Elf on a Shelf. Emma begged to get an elf last Christmas, and I was leaning toward saying no because I didn't want an additional chore to do during Christmastime. The concept is that the elf is inanimate all day, but at night after the kids go to sleep, it stays up doing fun things or playing pranks. The kids get to wake up each morning and find out what the elf was up to that night. Dan volunteered to plan the elf's activities; hence we now have Holly the elf who appears only during the month of December. These are just a few of the things that Emma and Hallie caught her doing.

Building a toilet paper snowman

Having a snowball fight (with sugar cube forts and marshmallow snowballs) 

Flying down a zipline across the kitchen. On her way, she hit a container of sequins that landed all over the kitchen floor. That elf is a mess!

Making s'mores (roasting a marshmallow over a battery-operated votive candle)

Master of disguise

Making a snow angel (in a pile of sugar)

And her all-time low, missing the toilet entirely. At least she only pooped chocolate, but the girls still refused to clean up after her.

The funniest Elf on a Shelf antic was when Holly took a bunch of selfies with Dan’s cell phone one night. She posed all over our house and snapped at least a dozen photos, including these gems!

Emma and Hallie absolutely love their elf and are so sad to see her go on New Year's Day.