The Hintons: December 2015

Our computer crashed again, which is why many of these posts are so late. I'll probably simplify and condense them all into one instead of doing a separate post for each activity.

December was a fun month full of a lot of things. Once Thanksgiving weekend was over, we spent some time getting our house in the Christmas spirit.

Once our tree was up and our house was decorated, Little Joe (our elf) made an appearance. Here are a couple of the things Little Joe was up to during the month. He did a lot of other fun things, but I forgot to take pictures. He toilet papered the tree, wrote "Be Good" with lipstick on the mirror, was hanging down from our light, made a snowman out of marshmallows, and hid from the kids. Will and Blake absolutely loved waking up each morning and going to find Little Joe. They laughed and laughed about the silly things he did and made sure to tell everyone we met what he was up to.

We also enjoyed going to our ward Christmas party. Lance had to work that morning, but he showed up for the last little bit. They had food, we sang songs, there was a photo shoot with the nativity scene, and Santa showed up.

The kids enjoyed talking to Santa and Mrs. Claus and had plenty of things to tell them. At first Will wasn't going to say anything because he had already told another Santa what he wanted. But I convinced him to tell him again.

One of the main things I wanted to get Will and our family this year was more kid friendly board games. Will absolutely loves games and always wants to play something. Instead of buying several and opening them all on Christmas and perhaps getting overwhelmed or focusing on one and missing some of the others, I decided that each week before Christmas we would open a new game. That way, we could spend the week playing that game and not having too many to choose from. There was one evening we played Candy Land, then we did a little craft for our pantry door, and ended the night with some dessert.

Austin enjoys hanging out while we have fun.

The kids have had a lot of fun going through all of the winter hats we have. Will tried to put as many hats on his head at one time as he could. You can't see them all, but I think there was about 9 hats on there. Blake is good to just wear one.

Another night, we decided to go for a drive over to the Roy Fire Department where they have a really fun lights display. There is a path lined with trees that goes around a grassy area. All of the trees were loaded with lights. We did several laps around the park, then we played tag with the kids. They loved it and were disappointed when we needed to leave. Hot chocolate when we got home made it a little bit better, however.

My mom came up for a couple of days and brought these cute dress-ups for Blake and Lexi.

Will had a Christmas party at preschool and I stayed to help out with it. They had about 10 stations where they went to. Some were games, crafts, singing, etc. I was in charge of a matching game.

We got Will's school pictures back and I think it turned out pretty cute.

We also went to the Woolsey Christmas party. We ate at Golden Corral and opened presents there. Then a few of us went over to Donny's house afterwards to hang out.

We got a couple of decent snow storms in December and the kids have been having a blast playing outside. They play with the neighbors for hours until their fingers seem like they are about to fall off. But they sure love it. We have also taken them to the park close to our house for some sledding.

The air was really cold that day and Austin didn't quite like it. So her and I just snuggled and stayed warm in the car while Lance took the kids sledding. She fell asleep and I had to snap a picture. Check out those eye lashes!

We also took the kids ice skating, kind of. Syracuse city has this little rink set up at one of the elementary schools. It is a lot cheaper than going to an ice rink, so I figured it would be a good place to take the kids for their first time. Well, it wasn't real ice. It was this plastic stuff that kind of mimics ice, but doesn't do a very good job. Unfortunately, Austin was not happy and I couldn't help the kids skate cause I was trying to take care of her. Will and Blake each really needed 1-on-1 help, so that made things difficult. Plus we picked a day that was freezing. We didn't stay very long. Will really wants to go again, though next time we will be going to a real rink.