Week before Christmas, fancy hair, elves at Gardner Village, Collin's Christmas band concert, activity days and ji jitsu

While waiting for art class Adeline nad I went and looked around at the elves.

I think they changed ALL the elves this year. Granted, we haven't been for a couple of years, but I don't remember a snowman elf AT ALL.

Adeline felt super tired last Friday and not well and fell asleep on the couch.

The girls wanted "fancy curly" hair so here was my attempt.

Adeline got mad at hers for being curly and then not wanting it curly. Oh the drama.

We went to Collin's Christmas band concert. It was FANTASTIC! I took a lot of videos, but they never post well. It was SO SO good. And it's so great to see him playing the whole body version. It was with several of the choirs, so it ran really long, but it was really, really good.

Liam working ji jitsu and the example for the rest of the class.

Evelyn made these ornaments and cookies at activity days. Her leaders are SO amazing and creative. She LOVES LOVES going.

Early reading by the Christmas tree.

Evelyn had to come this last art class since Collin went to work. More elf watching.

These were all lit up snowflakes which is tricky to see in the picture, but really cute.

Pretty sunrise three mornings before Christmas. It is SO weird we have basically had no snow so far this year. So strange.
 

Ticket to Ride Sunday game, girls' gymnastics, and chocolate advent calendars

Got all my kids to play Ticket to Ride with me Sunday afternoon. It was a MASSIVE 3 hour game, with a dinner break in between, and I lost of course, but everyone was playing and engaged and no SCREENS! Christmas miracle!

Back to gymnastics, Evelyn practicing her handstand.

Adeline working on her cartwheels. This was the first I had seen her do cartwheels.

Beam handstand practice.

And our cute friend Theodore gifted the girls each a chocolate advent calendar. They were ECSTATIC!
 

Candlelight Christmas Part 2

They had pioneer dancing in the school house. NO ONE really wanted to do this, but I was excited and made everyone do it.

The pictures are blurry, but we learned the Virigina Reel. I was partners with Evelyn, the boys were partners, and Ryan was with Adeline. Everyone said it was REALLY FUN! Yeah! I knew it would be fun from reviews I read that kids really liked it.

Collin and Liam doing the "sashay" down the middle.

Here we are seeing a Christmas print getting printed at the print shop.

Lots of work to print Christmas cards and letters.

Playing a quick game of tic tac toe. It was SO nice to have all my kids not fighting and engaged. It was REALLY NICE.

Here we are making our candles. This is different than places we have made candles at in the past. This was just wrapping the wax basically, but still very cool and interesting. Unique smell too. We have since burned a few of the candles. They burn fast!

Putting our name on the naughty or nice list. They did have Father Christmas there too, but Adeline was a little scared to do it, so we looked from afar.

Collin said his was part nice and part naughty. The one thing I realized the morning after we forgot to do was go and see the live nativity. That was a bummer, but we did everything else, including Evelyn losing her gloves :( but I guess that is par for the course in a cold outdoor adventure wandering around. It was really a fun, unique time.