christmas cards & cones.

Alright. Fess up. You love the holidays like that camel loves Hump Day.

I won't even try to hide it - I looove the holidays!! I think it really is a pretty magical time of year. And I've been trying to make sure we were able to decorate and celebrate to the fullest, even with our meager budgets. Isn't that what all the most touching Christmas stories are created with?

The first thing on my to-do list was Christmas cards. It is a tradition I have always loved, (one that is sadly slowly dying off) and one that I plan on doing every year for the rest of our lives. We tried to get a little creative this year, since we're living in Florida now and let's be honest, there is no such thing as a "winter" here. [Our family thinks I'm a whiner I'm sure, but it's just not Christmas is you can't wear a big ole jacket!] So we had a little fun with our Christmas card pictures this year...

 

Thank goodness my sister-in-law is the puppet master of a camera. She is incredibly talented and we're always so so thankful when she says she will take a photo for us! [In fact, feel free to check out her amazing blog!] After that was crossed off, we had other things to focus on, like our tree, but I'll save that for it's own post because I'm pretty proud of how that little number came out.

I have also been called to serve in the Primary as the "Faith in God Activity Coordinator." Basically, I get to plan all the activities for the cutest, most fun girls in primary, the 8-11 year olds! So for our first activity, since it was so close to Christmas, I had the girls decorate Christmas trees out of ice cream cones & candy. They LOVED it!! They were so cute about how professional or how silly they wanted them to look and their eyes bulged out of their heads when they saw all the candy laid out to decorate with and snack on (sorry parents!) When I took these pictures, two of the girls had gone to the bathroom together and I didn't get a chance to take any more. :( But how awesome are they!?

Yes, that bottom left one is mine. Theirs were way more fun!!

Then I read them this story I found called "Teach The Children." I wasn't a HUGE fan of it for kids, because it's long and some parts are a little over their heads, but nevertheless, they participated! It's a story about how a child catches Santa on Christmas Eve and he's putting ornaments on the tree, and after each one, he says "Teach the children that [this] symbolizes [that]."  It is supposed to show children to teach other children that Christmas is more than presents & greed & fast-paced. I had the girls make bracelets and for every symbol read in the story, I told them to pick a bead out of this box of them (that a sweet lady in the Relief Society donated) that represented that symbol.

We used twine and tiiiiny beads, so the activity didn't work that well, but they tried and they got the point so that was all that mattered to me! I'd say a pretty successful first activity!

So just know that Christmas is slowly but surely starting to make its way into the Anderson home and we can't wait to show you everything else we have in store! YAY for the holidays!!