Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

Our tree is up!!! Caleb begged and begged yesterday, so I decided to beg a tiny bit too, and it worked. My reasoning was pretty good, too. I don't have a lot of Christmas decorations, so my house doesn't make me feel like it's Christmas season without the tree. I feels like it now, though:) No pics yet, we're kind of waiting on our old computer to come back this week so that pictures will work again. This computer has never worked right since Caleb busted out DVD drive out.

So my calling was clarified for me yesterday. I am the Activity Days Leader, and the other lady is the assistant leader. EEK! I have lots of plans though, which I'm hoping will turn out to be lots of fun. Some examples are preparing an FHE lesson and packet, a book club night, babysitting stations to learn skills, a talent night and about 10 months more worth of stuff (I just gave you January and February). I also don't think they've been working on an article of faith every week, but we'll be starting that this week. However, I don't plan on doing treats every week, and I was just wondering if anyone knows if that's the norm or not. I was told that it's run kind of like FHE, but FHE usually has a treat, so I just wanted to make sure. We don't exactly have a huge budget for Activity Days... So anyway, I'm really excited about my calling, in case you couldn't tell, but I'm also more nervous than I've ever been for any other calling. I'm hoping that means that this will turn out to be my favourite calling yet.

New Calling

So after over 2 months of waiting for one, I got a new calling this past Sunday. I am one of the Activity Days leaders for our ward. I'm really excited about it. We have 14 active girls, so I'm sure I'll get MORE than my share of estrogen, ha ha.

I also got my dishwasher, HORRAY! We got family photos done on Saturday by Brent. He was in YSA with us in Grande Prairie. The photos on here of me, the boys and the family were all done by him. He charged me a bag of Christmas baking, which I could totally afford.

Anyways, not too much else is new here, other than lots of Christmas music being played. Here are two of my three favourite Christmas albums.

The Boy Are Back

My boys are back home, HORRAY! I was so excited when John's dad rang the doorbell when they got her that I nearly fell down the stairs I was running so fast, ha ha. More good news, we ordered our dishwasher last Friday and we'll be picking it up this coming Saturday. I am SO excited about that. I think some of the people who follow my blog know the dishwasher story, but I'm sure some of you don't, so I thought I would post it here.

Back when we were still YSAs up in Grande Prairie, a bunch of us girls were talking about household chores before church one Sunday. John piped up and said that he would expect his wife to do all of the dishes. As all of us looked at him with nothing but shock and disgust, I'm sure, he quickly added "well, I'd buy her a dishwasher". Then on fast Sunday a month or so later, I was sitting on the Edmonton Alberta Temple steps with John, trying to figure out how to tell him that I'd gotten an answer to what I was fasting about, when he didn't even know what I was fasting about. So I looked at him and said "John, I think Heavenly Father wants me to get a dishwasher". So there you have it, the joke behind the dishwasher in our marriage, PLUS the story about how I told John that I knew I was supposed to marry him.

Hope you're all having a great Remembrance Day. Even if you don't support everything our military does, still support them for being willing to do their best to serve us.

Announcement

I am happy to announce that we will soon be adding another member to our family on Sat, Nov 14th. Take a look:

Christmas Is Coming, HORRAY!

So I want to talk in this post about some of my favourite Christmas traditions. The first one of the season, other than spending a small to large fortune on gifts, is Christmas baking, YAY! Now I don't know about anyone else, but I LOVE Christmas baking. It smells great, it tastes great, and since everyone else is eating it too, you don't feel nearly as guilty intaking those extra calories. This year I'll be doing all of my baking on my own for the first time. It's exciting, but also kind of sad, because I've been blessed the past few years to be able to do the majority of my baking with my brother. So let me know, what's your favourite recipe for Christmas baking. E-mail me at blynikki@hotmail.com or send me a message on Facebook, I really need more ideas for this year:)

On the first Monday of December we put up our tree. We usually get a new ornament each year, however we made our own last year, and that was lots of fun too. We do this as our FHE activity. When I was growing up it was the first Sunday of December, but that doesn't work in the church with the First Presidency's Christmas Devotional being the same night, so I bumped it to Monday as an FHE thing and it works great.

The next tradition I guess is probably that we would go out looking at Christmas lights on Christmas Eve, each of us with our hot beverage of choice in hand (mine is either hot chocolate or a flavoured steamed milk when they're available). The past few times that we've done this in Wainwright or Edmonton we all pile into a van, grab our drinks from 7-11 and off we go. Christmas music is optional, but if I had it my way we'd be listening to Christmas music for about half of the year, ha ha.

After we get home from looking at lights it's time for an oldie but a goodie. We each get to open one present. As I was growing up, it was whatever gift we chose, as long as it wasn't a major gift, but John and I have changed this to a new pair of pyjamas. This year just the boys are getting them, since John and I have enough PJs to choke a dead horse. There is usually a book involved as well. I think last year Caleb got Tales of Beetle the Bard. Then we put out a cold drink and snack for Santa before tucking the kids into bed.

I realize I could be opening a can of worms here, but John and I have decided to give Santa a little space in our home. Enough for him to stop, have a snack and leave a movie for each of us. I think that's a pretty good amount of Santa. He's there, but he doesn't overshadow anything.

In the morning we'll be reading from the scriptures about when Christ was born before we head downstairs. I'm hoping this will remind the kids that their Savior should come before anything else in all things. Then it's downstairs to open presents and to have a nice big family breakfast followed by a nice holiday supper that night. This year we're having steak instead of turkey. Mutual decision that I'm very happy about. We'll also have perogies, cabbage rolls, stuffing and some other stuff with a birthday cake for dessert to remind us that we are celebrating the fact that our Savior was born. I'm thinking about doing a cake for April 6th as well.

Boxing Day was also a big day in my family growing up. That was the day that we went and visited extended family and did our Christmas with them. I really enjoyed it, since we got 2 Christmas Days in a row.

So what are your favourite Christmas traditions?