December day at a glance

December seems to always be one of the busiest months.  Although in my eyes, it now ties with the month of May in craziness!  We have had lots of great activities happening.  Some of them have been quiet times as a family reading and learning together and some of have been busy days out and about.  This particular first Saturday was a full day starting with cleaning the church.  We take turns and once every four months it’s our ward’s chance to contribute.  I love seeing these guys work so diligently on cleaning the doors and windows.   

 Katelyn, the cute Windex model:)

Afterwards Tyler took Andrew to his soccer tournament in Ripon.  We were sad to not have them part of our tree decorating.  We have been able to be part of the Rocklin tree lighting since 2012.  Each year has been a little different, but the trees this year were purchased by our church and then I got together five families to donate and do the decorating.  Not only is this fun to do with the kids and friends, but it’s been a little more personal the last two years because a few of the trees have gone to the cute Hispanic ladies that clean my house each month. This year the Alton, Cahoon, Diaz, and Lovin families joined us.  The community liaison had some decorations donated to him and so we were even able to use a lot of those.  This year Alicia brought some ribbon which was a beautiful way to tie everything together!  We had a great time and the trees looked so pretty! 

Afterwards the kids and I went with the Altons to our church building in Granite Bay to see the huge display of nativities there.  Unfortunately we got there an hour before they opened, but we knew the security guys and luckily they let us in and we really had the whole place to ourselves.  I’m not sure how many nativities there are, but hundreds.  In addition, they do such a great job decorating the rooms with blankets and tapestries to match the area of the world where the nativities come from.  One of our favorite things was putting on the cute costumes they have there and making up our own nativity.   

 Layla was the cutest little lamb I’ve ever seen!!! 

 And it was SO fun to have their sweet baby, Sadie as our baby Jesus.

 That evening we went to a family party of our friends, Cliff and Amber Wong.  Each year they invite Santa to come and he is always a hit!  We knew we had to go for Matthew’s sake.  Plus the other kids all get to sit on his lap (if we force them for a photo, ha ha!!) and get a gift.