Christmastime in Hershey

We kicked things off with visiting Hershey Park. It was super crowded, we had to park far away, not in our normal season pass lot, and pretty cold. The lines were long for everything. The kids were troopers though and loved it! Brielle and Daddy went on the Tilt a Whirl which had a long slow line. Carter and Lily rode the rocket ships twice to wait.

We rode the train to see the lights, visited the reindeer stable, and then Brielle really wanted to ride the Sky View. Lily really wanted to visit Santa. So we split up to wait in those long lines. We weren't sure we'd see Santa before his scheduled 20 minute break but luckily we made it!

Lily is usually very shy with Santa, but she really wanted him to know about her Christmas wishes (fancy jeweled rings) so she made the effort. Santa was pretty tired once we saw him, but it was still cute and fun!

Decorating for Christmas is always fun!

We decorated gingerbread houses and watched the Christmas devotional at my visiting teacher's house. I didn't take pictures but we all had a lot of fun, especially the kids eating the extra candy. Lily ate so much she didn't feel very good afterwards, I think that was a good lesson for her to learn!

We hosted our annual Christmas play party. We added in the Reindeer hats to be extra costumes:

Brielle helped get the cookies ready!

The kids had so much fun dressing up and participating! 

We also had snacks and made some cute ornaments.

Angels holding stars above the scene

More nativities: 

Lily's preschool program (she has to "pose" never smiling when I take her photo, she's the angel in the front) The kids did a great job singing all their songs and they were very proud of themselves. 

And in Primary on Sunday:

Brielle loved being the donkey, Aurora petted her head the entire time!

A secret Santa left this magnificent Gingerbread house on our doorstep! The kids were in awe and felt so special to get it!

It was a challenge to keep Carter away from the candy on the house. We displayed it just at his level with our other houses and every now and then he would sneak over and snatch something to pop in his mouth before we could catch him!

We went to see the Nutcracker with some friends. It was beautiful and the dancers (all youth, even the major parts, the sugar plum cavalier was only 14!) did a wonderful job.

Random photo of Lily reading to Carter while we were running errands:

I forgot to take pictures, but as a reward for Lily finishing her 100 reading lessons, I took the kids to a Polar Express pajama party at the car museum. It was crowded and when I got there to pay for tickets they said they were all sold out and I was supposed to buy them ahead of time! Luckily they let me buy some anyway, the kids would've been so disappointed to get there in their pjs and have to leave! They got hot dogs, pizza, popcorn, and cookies and settled in on their sleeping bags to watch the movie. It was like a giant movie watching slumber party and I think if we do it again we'll just host something like it at home with friends.

Christmas cookies are always an important tradition:

For Christmas Eve we had a lovely Sacrament meeting with lots of beautiful music. Brandon did a great job preparing the choir and we had some instruments playing too. We hosted the missionaries for dinner and it was fun to have some company. Brielle had started feeling bad a few days before and was still wiped out. 

After dinner of ham, potatoes, salad, rolls, jell-o and green beans, we let them decorate a cookie and while the icing dried out we did a little Christmas program. Each of the girls played 3 Christmas songs on the piano and we all played the handbells for Away in a Manger. They played so well, we're quite proud of the progress they've made! The missionaries gave a little message, we had some chocolate pie, and then we gave them some goody bags for their stockings.  

 Mama Judy sent Christmas pajamas, so we opened those presents and read stories before setting out some cookies and milk for Santa! 

Santa came and the stockings were too heavy to keep hanging! 

The big gift this time was a doll house!

Christmas morning the girls were pretty excited to see that Santa had come. Brielle had just enough energy to open presents and eat some breakfast before crashing. By then she was on day 5 of fever and really yucky nose. Poor thing!

We got some lovely gifts from Eric's family, Grandma and Grandpa, Mama Judy, and the girls got to do some shopping at school so they were excited to have us open their little gifts. 

Brandon had the rest of the week off and we had planned some fun things. But illness put a damper on all of that. He still took Lily and Carter to the Chocolate World Breakfast with Santa and Mrs. Claus. Carter loved getting to meet the Hershey characters, they kept coming over to him to wave and give high fives. They got lots of yummy food and an ornament signed by Santa, a cookie to decorate, and extra candy. By Wednesday Lily and I had sore throats. Brandon was so helpful taking care of us, cooking yummy chicken noodle soup, entertaining the kids so I could rest, making more meals and cleaning up. It wasn't the funnest holiday for him but I'm so glad we had that time off to not have to worry about other things. Thursday instead of heading to the Crayola Factory and Eric's like we had originally planned, I went to the doctor and got some antibiotics for strep throat. Friday the girls went in and got diagnosed also. Once the drugs started working we got to feeling better just in time for school to start up again! We didn't do anything special for New Years, but the girls were excited to get a unicorn calendar from the clinic and they've happily drawn things on it every day!  

Farewell 2017, it's been a fun year!