The month of December

The month of December too has brought a flurry of activity. And while the weather has oscillated from the 40's to in the 70's it still feels "a lot like Christmas!"

We have attended several fun Christmas parties (just the parents this time while our dear Laura babysat) one at T-Bone Tom's for Greg's work and the other at an amazing house in Bay Oaks - so large in fact it had its own movie theater and panic room! Jacob had his Christmas Program at school ("Silent Night, Holy Night") in which they sang "Away in a Manager", a song about a donkey, and "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." He looked very cute with an over-sized Santa hat on. We also attended a "Birthday Party for Jesus" at church which was really neat. There were lots of crafts to do, cupcakes to decorate, and Catherine was particularly taken with the Fisher Price nativity scenes with "Baby Jesus." We have loaded up into the car several times to see the Christmas lights all through the neighborhood which the kids LOVE to do and have ridden "The Christmas Train" in Alvin twice. We even attempted a gingerbread house together which Jacob enjoyed very much. He carefully decorated the entire roof while Catherine attempted to eat all the candy up at a very rapid rate! : ) Another first this year was the kids helped decorate the tree. Jacob most enjoyed hanging the ornaments on the tree while Catherine helped to carefully unwrap them and hand them off or sometimes not and just carry them around. There were several ornament casualties, however, with some Superglue all was well. : ) And of course we visited Santa at the mall (see the super cute photos on another post.) One evening we were invited for pizza and the celebration of St. Nickolaus - different from Santa Claus (December 6th) - at our friends' house from Germany. The kids left one shoe on the porch and then Nikolaus knocked at the door and there was a small specially wrapped gift for each child in their shoe. There were also yummy Germans chocolates and cookies. Very interesting to learn the traditions of other countries.

Jacob and Catherine also have some new favorite movies for the holiday season: "The Polar Express", "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (Rankin and Bass), and "The Grinch" of course. Some favorite holiday books are: again The Grinch, Silent Night, and The Donkey's Christmas Song - Catherine LOVES this one and it is very sweet. They also really like Christmas music. One of Jacob's favorites is "Alvin and the Chipmunks" of which he does a pretty funny impersonation of and Catherine loves "Silent Night" and when she sings her version she is darling. : ) They also like "Frosty the Snowman."

For Christmas Eve we plan to go to the family-friendly service at church and celebrate Christmas day at home. For New Year's we will head to Grampy and Grammy's and ring in the new year with the Whitney clan.