Weekend before Christmas Weekend

Christmas, and the weeks leading up to it, have been moved to the back burner much too long--actually, blogging in general has been moved to the back burner for much too long. There's so much fun that happened, and I really want to get it all out there before I forget it all!

It was a week before Christmas that we bundled up the seven of us and headed out to look at Christmas lights.

I guess I was too concerned about packing a candy cane, cookies and a cup of (not too) hot chocolate for each of the four older girls to remember our camera. But we had so much fun going around town to all the neighborhood displays and a special light show our town does every year.

The Saturday a week before Christmas, my mom took the girls and me to see Little House Christmas! I know the girls were excited to see this, but I'm so glad I was able to see it as well! Our family has been reading the Little House books for a couple years now, so this was a fun Christmas present for us all!

The girls wore their new shirts I made for them (with matching bows of course)! Caroline taught our MOPS group how to make these prints--and they're totally adorable and fairly easy!

And right before the play, the girls went with grammy to pick up Auntie. She was able to spend the week leading up to Christmas with us. We were so happy to have her here! That first night she was in town, we celebrated Autnie's birthday. We ordered in Italian food and watched her open presents while lovin' on some sweet girls.

During all the celebration, we discovered a crying baby. Turns out she had a bite mark shortly after an interaction with our 2yr old. We've never had a biter, and I can't believe she did this. I did ask Boushka why she bit Scrunchie and she said "Well, I was trying to be nice because I only bit her a wittle bit!"

On Sunday we went to my friend, Lynette's house. She made several gingerbread houses --one per guest--from scratch. She used no kit! I was amazed at this! We each brought some candy and then we had some frosting from the hostess, as well. I took the three older girls and they had a blast. Of course, I had fun hanging out with my friends, too!

That night, I decided I better finalize all Christmas related gifts, party stuff, etc for the week. So I made some gifts--these are lemon hand scrubs. Yes, it came from pinterest!


I was a co-organizer for Peach's class party, and somehow I had also signed up to bring one of the three treats. So I got busy making Oreo Balls--per Peach's request. They were a hit!

And if you've been a reader of mine for a while, you'll probably remember that we don't do Elf on the Shelf (mainly because I didn't feel like spending the $30 when I discovered it a few years ago--cheap, I know), but instead we do Penguin Man. He is similar to EOTS because he's Santa's helper who watches over the girls, and now he also "interacts" with them. So Sunday night he left them this note.

And they found him in the fridge with green rice milk and red almond milk. He's quite the ornery guy--especially without arms!

This catches us up for the weekend before Christmas. There was so much going on this week before the big day, that I'm breaking the Christmas posts up into several posts. Better late than never!!!