The Always Crazy Soderholm Family: December 2012

Traditions!

Gingerbread houses at Geemaw and Papa's house

Nana and Charlie were there this year!

They were excited to meet Katherine.

I think they got along quite nicely!

Grant and Aurora playing dress-up! We are glad to get to know Aurora and Rorik better!

Trip to Yankee Candle with the cousins later in the day

Snow is starting to fall!

Grant stayed with Robert the whole time! What a sweet older cousin!

The kids loved dipping their own candles!

Grant, as expected, loved smelling the candles!

A day or two later, I found this elf on the shelf (by the way, we don't do that tradition).

Busted!

A random evening watching funny You-tube videos. Maybe we were watching "Christmas Sweats!" That was a favorite.

Katherine continues to prove to be another good Soderholm eater. A tad messy, but at least she doesn't have a habit of rubbing it in her hair every night. Ahem, Christian. ;)

I sometimes take pictures of cool artwork that the kids do before throwing it away. 4 kids= too much artwork to keep. Forgive me, guys!

Ok, funny story. We had several artifial trees from our wedding reception. Although I strongly prefer live trees we have used artificial ones every year because we already have them and we are cheap. But, this year we only got one out of storage and like many many items from our move (or possibly just because it belonged to us and we break everything) it no longer lit up. So, Danny, sweet husband that he is bought, on his own, our first ever real live tree. The one that I have been dreaming of cutting down together as a family since we were first married. Yes, he bought it himself on the way home from work one night. It was shorter than me. True story. I was slightly underwhelmed. Poor guy, can't win. We put it on a coffee table that we had in our garage. It worked out... kind of. (American problem- I totally know.) As a note, I tried to only show the tree, not the table in the pictures.

We rented our house in Farmville. I wasn't thrilled, but it would help us financially and I was excited to get some of our furniture back. Another chunk is still in storage, but that is another story. Katherine likes the Christmas decorations!

We liked reading Christmas books and doing our December devotionals every night.

We had a fun branch Christmas activity! The kids were cute singing. There were some nice musical numbers, but my favorite part was singing our part in "Five Golden Rings." Each table had a part to sing and it was so funny!

It was really fun, but it was just one of those nights when I needed help from Danny and he was working. Not sure if I have mentioned it much, but he has been a work-a-holic this year and it has been rough functioning as a single parent with 4 kids the majority of the time!

So, because there was a lot of tension from Danny and I not seeing each other much, I decided to do the 12 days of Christmas for him! But then, he gave me a present the same night! What?!?! It was my idea first! Oh well, we both gave each other a gift every day for 12 days. It was fun. Usually they were pretty small and inexpensive things because money was tight paying mortgage and rent, but we helped each other to feel loved and remembered.

The poor guy worked really hard and when he was home he often had something else to fix. He kept a happy attitude most of the time though.

The Joy School students put on a really cute nativity!

After their nice program, they made gingerbread houses!

Thanks Allison, Linda, and Merideth for being such good teachers!

Victoria had a Colonial Day at her school and I was lucky enough to get to help. Mary Jo, Aunt Leah's mom, lent Victoria this pretty costume!

Victoria's teacher trusted Grant and Victoria enough to let them go from room to room with her class while I ran a station in Mrs. Jone's classroom with Katherine. I only got pictures from there. We played old fashioned games such as jacks and pick-up sticks. In other stations they learned about colonial days, made soap, ate food, etc.

Katherine got in on the advent calendar fun this year!

We went caroling with our Joy School friends, the Kemps, the Evers, and the Gardners.

We made the kids in the backseat really happy one night by driving through 100 miles of lights in Newport News.

Ok, the front seaters liked it too. Funny face on Katherine. Really, she liked it. Haha!

Danny and I celebrated our Anniversary. Then, we spent a couple nights in Richmond. The kids enjoyed their treats and craft night with Grandma and Grandpa!

And I caught these rare, but hilarious photos of the entertaining grandparents!

On Christmas Eve we went to CMOR to see the Legendary Santa!

We had Chinese food with the cousins that afternoon and acted out the Nativity!

Then, I had a brilliant flashback of a fun activity that we should try with the kids. We lifted them up to the ceiling, then dropped them.

Some of the kids were ok with it, others figured it out, a few were terrified. Oops!

We made it home in time to get in pjs, feed the reindeer, and put out cookies! Thank goodness!

The next morning was Christmas! So exciting!

We went to the Soderholm's too. I think those pictures are on one of Danny's devices. We will need to add those.

It was a great Christmas and the kids were very spoiled.

Winter break was fun! Kendall and V had a lot of fun together singing karaoke and wearing peace sign shirts.