Christmas Traditions

We've been able to do a lot of our favorite Christmas traditions already this year. The kids put on a Christmas program at school every year and it was super awesome this year. Wynn has been practicing the songs at home for weeks. Sydney even had a solo part this year.

We decorated gingerbread houses as we usually do this year, but this year we had special treat since the elders were able to join us. 

At the Festival of Trees the kids got to decorate cookies, make Christmas crafts, and visit with Santa. It was really fun morning and something we've never done before. I hope to add it to our Christmas season festivities from now on. They also earned their money this year to buy gifts for each other, so on Saturday we took them to the Santa mall. Its a local event where people from the community come together and sell things for kids to buy for their families for Christmas. Everything is seven dollars or less. Its really great because people donate money so families with low income can apply to get free Santa bucks for their kids too. Its a fun tradition to help the kids get in the Christmas spirit and help other kids as well as think about what they can give their siblings. Of course, we saw Santa there too! 

Sydney's ballet school put on their annual performance of the Nutcracker. I look forward to seeing this classic every year and the different roles she get to play in it every year. This year she was a village dancer, soldier, and then an angel. They did a good job!

Today we decorated Christmas cookies and continued working on our Nativity puzzle and story advent we do every year to help retell the story of Christ's birth. The past few years as the LDS church has put out the Light the World challenge where we do different things that Christ would do each day for 25 days, we decided we would encourage our family to participate by putting a small fake tree up in our kitchen and buying special ornaments just for that tree. Each time we complete a  Light the World daily challenge throughout the weeks leading up to Christmas, we put an ornament on the tree. Its really fun to watch the videos each night and talk about the challenge that we can participate in the next day and hang our ornaments on the tree. By Christmas it should be a fully decorated little tree!

Merry Christmas 

Legos

Wynn turned six this week. He has grown up so much in the past few months! I think going to school with Sydney has made him feel big. He is doing great at reading at school and made a lot of friends. Wynn is still my cuddliest child and he has an infectious laugh. When he gets a case of the giggles, he just can't stop laughing and everyone around seems to end up laughing too. The pictures below of him laughing truly do his crazy laugh justice.
Wynn has an engineers mind and is really into putting things together, taking them apart and seeing how they work. I guess that's why he loves Legos so much.

He wanted a Lego themed birthday party. It was the easiest cake I've had to do in a while because he just wanted to put his own Legos he'd built on top of it. Wynn helped me make the pinata earlier in the week and chose the games for his party. His favorite game was a scavenger hunt we had to find bags of Lego pieces. Each child then got to build a little Lego race car and race it down the slide. They had pizza and popcorn for dinner and then cake. It was a lot of fun!

Wings Over Houston/NASA

After we got off the ship we went directly to the Wings over Houston airshow with the Air Force Thunderbirds. It started late because of a torrential downpour but we still go to see all the cool stuff!

We also visited the beach and then NASA the next day. The kids were pooped when it was all said and done!

Cruise 2017

Our cruise left out of Galveston, Texas. We got to port in Roatan, Honduras where we held monkeys, sloths, and took the kids snorkeling for the first time. Abby and Wynn didn't love how hyper the monkeys were but I loved it! The snorkeling in Roatan was the best snorkeling I've ever seen. I didn't know there could be brightly colored coral so abundant and close to the surface. Both Sydney and Wynn did great and picked it right up. They even handled it super well when they got some water in their snorkels and didn't freak out or stand on the reef. We ported in Mahahual or Costa Maya Mexico and went to see the Dzibanche Mayan ruins. Its amazing how tall they were and quite a workout to climb all the way to the top. When we stopped at Cozumel, Andy and I went diving and the kid stayed on the boat with Vic and Maxine. We got to see sharks, turtle, ray, tons of fish, coral, lion fish (that the dive master kills since they are invasive) and a giant eel. Like 4 feet long and 8 inches wide... I was nervous about him when he came out of his hole even more than the sharks. We all had fun and got to do new things. Andy and I even got to try the surf rider on board. Other activities included ice skating, mini golf, trivia games, karoake, dance lessons, shows, kids club, themed meals, parades, swimming, water slides, and more. 

Sydney's favorite thing about the cruise was trying the water slide.

Wynn liked the kids club. They had a rock n roll party he was really excited about. They got to dance with the characters, have their face painted, and even get flashing rings.

Abby loved the kids club the most! She never wanted to leave and even though she missed lots of naps and got tired, she always perked up if we took her to the club!

Vic and Maxine celebrated their 43rd anniversary while on board too. It was really special to have them with us on the trip. We love cruising. There is something for everyone and are so grateful we were able to go.