Christmas Lately

I know I have blogged a lot about birthdays lately, but we have been celebrating Christmas all month also! We will start with school. Sophie was quarantined for most of December, but she got to go back for 2 days before the winter break. Her class had a winter party & they sent home a class holiday card:

Sadie's class celebrated her teacher's half birthday & their winter party:

Soccer has slowed down for Sadie but her team had a Christmas party. We tried to come up with something safe for them so we rented a theater & they wore Christmas pajamas to watch a Christmas movie:

While we were out one day, the girls found the Ugly Sweater Hall of Fame:

The girls got to have a slumber party with Zoe when she came to their birthday party:

Of course we have done lots of Christmas arts & crafts all month:

Unfortunately, we have spent this week back in quarantine. Sophie literally went back to school for 2 days & on that 2nd day, a boy in her class tested positive so we got an email over the weekend from her school that she was exposed. Again. Between her basketball team, 2 classes at her school & her class at church, the 1st graders were passing covid around. Instead of trying to keep her separate the week of Christmas, we just decided to hunker down & quarantine together at home. Thank goodness we have plenty of Christmas activities to keep us busy! First up, the girls decorated their gingerbread house:

At first Sadie was nervous because it has gluten in it, but I re-assured her that she was ok to decorate it but to not touch her face, so she immediately washed her hands afterwards. After she sprayed icing in Sophie's mouth, that is!

They were so proud that they officially did it on their own this time:

The night before we found out, we went to visit the Burkman Family Home:

This house has been decorating like crazy for 18 years so I don't know why we haven't seen it before?! They were actually chosen to be on the Great Christmas Light Fight on tv, which we love watching so the girls were so excited! We drove by it first & then realized it would be more fun if we got out because they had a lot of selfie stations:

They even converted their garage & added windows so everyone could see the toy shop inside:

So awesome! We will definitely be adding this to our list of annual Christmas traditions!

We were supposed to go spend a few nights with Bryan's parents this week but since we were stuck at home, we tried to come up with something creative. They had bought tickets for us to do a drive thru Christmas light display with them so we decided to join them, but instead of getting to go together in 1 car, we drove separately in 2 cars & talked on the phone while we went through it:

These 2 had so much fun hanging out the sunroof while we drove:

Finally, today we baked Christmas cookies:

This was our first year baking them gluten free, so I was a little nervous but somehow they turned out! I helped with the dough, but the girls did all of the decorating:

Look at the concentration:

Someone gave us small cookie cutters so we made a lot of small cookies & then a few larger ones like we normally do. I think they turned out perfectly:

I think we are officially ready for Christmas!