December Traditions

In keeping with tradition, my mom, sisters, dad and I took our kids to Festival of Trees the first week in December. I say it with everything that we do all together, but it is always crazy, everything takes longer than it should, and we all feel like we've been wrestling wild animals when all is said and done. But we must enjoy because we keep getting all these crazies together.

 I think rather than feeling left out from the older girls, Meili and Ruby decided to form a "club" and were inseparable all weekend.

 The highlight for the girls is hardly the trees. They like the activities and the prizes.

 The next day, my sister Emily, my parents and I took the kids to Temple Square to see the lights. 

The last couple years, I've gone with Josh and the YM/YW in our ward the week after Christmas, so I was totally not prepared for how much more crowded it is to go before Christmas. I also wonder if because it was so much warmer this year that there were more people there. I prepared my children for the Arctic, and most of the time Meili was begging me to take her gloves off.

Sadly, I think Meili had been having so much "Cousin fun" for the couple of days that we were there, that she was really not super well-behaved. So I was pretty frustrated with her by the end of the night, and it kind of tainted my feeling about the whole event. However, in the scrapbook, I think I will choose to leave that part out, because I think Temple Square is absolutely one of the most beautiful places on earth. 

The next day, my mom hosted her annual Gingerbread House making party-where I took no pictures. So I will have to get some from someone else :)