The Seventh Date of Christmas

After enjoying a birthday dinner at Danny's grandma's, we put the kids in bed and grabbed some hot chocolate from 7-11 (the one in Kaysville has the BEST hot chocolate!)

 And we spent the night putting together this puzzle:

 And watching "Arthur Christmas"

I just love Christmas time!

The Sixth Date of Christmas

Caydence and I joined my family at Paige's annual Christmas ice skating show.  I just love listening to the Christmas music and watching all of the skaters.  

These pictures are all from my phone, so not great, and she is far away, oh well :)

The fifth date of Christmas

Pretty much the one thing Danny wants for Christmas every year is Jazz tickets, so my parents obliged, as usual :)  But because he is starting school in January, the games we could attend were pretty limited, so we got an early Christmas present last week.  We had such a great time, and my parents babysat to make it even better!  (Oh, and the Jazz won, bonus!)

 Before the game we stopped by the food court for dinner.  We were casually discussing if he was going to get a bonus this year at work and then we opened our fortune cookies.  I couldn't believe the timing...  :)

The Fourth date of Christmas

Danny's parents were kind enough to babysit for us so we could go the the First Presidency Christmas Devotional with my family.  I have never been and it was so great!  And we had great seats too!  I have lived in Utah since I was 9 and I have never even been to General Conference!  So this was a big deal for me.  I just loved it!

The third date of Chrhistmas

Another tradition we have is going to the Festival of Trees.  We just love it!  I like to find the original trees that are made of things other than trees.  Confused?  Here are 2 examples:

This one is made of soda bottles that they have kind of shredded.

 And it came with every different soda you can imagine (and then some more I've never heard of)

 This one is one big long dryer hose(?)

 And just a Real SL tree we liked :)

 They also have things other than trees, and I found this paining that I fell in love with.  It is by Dowdle (sp?) and I just love his pictures!  I knew they have sold puzzles of his paintings at Costco in the past, and we have been looking for a puzzle to do this Christmas, so I looked, and they had them again this year!!  We are really excited to put it together, if we could just find a night that both of us are home!

 As we were leaving Danny happened to spot this tree and we were so glad we didn't miss it!  If you read my earlier post about Caydence's strange obsession, you'll understand the excitement, ha ha.

We of course stopped for the yummy scones too!  It was a great night, we look forward to the festival every year!

The second Date of Christmas

For the Second date of Christmas, the kids and I attended the annual tree lighting/parade.  It is always so fun.  And a great parade because it is short, and not hot!  It was even warmer than usual, and no snow, which made it even more enjoyable.  It is such a fun tradition.  They have free hot chocolate, a band playing, and then a parade.  The sad thing is that last year, in the big windstorm, the huge "Christmas Tree" blew down!  They still put lights in all the other trees but it was a little sad to be missing the main tree!

The first date of Christmas 2012

I'm using "date" a little more liberally this year.  It can include any combination of family members, as long as it is Christmas themed, ha ha.

So for our first "date" we joined my whole family on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and headed down to Salt Lake for the night.  We started at City Creek and put our name in at the Cheesecake factory for dinner.  We respectfully declined when the wait was 4 hours!

We saw the candy windows that have returned to Macy's.  They are so crazy!  All candy!

 Then we headed over to temple square to see the lights.  It was CRAZY down there, being the Saturday after Thanksgiving and all.  And to add to the misery, Caydence screamed and cried the whole time because we made her stay in the stroller.  As we were leaving I snapped a quick (blurry) picture of this tree.  Yep, that's the only picture I got because Caydence was such a nightmare.

We then had cafe rio for dinner, yum!  We were even lucky enough to find a little room that we could shut ourselves in and have some "quiet".  At least quiet from the rest of the restaurant; there were like 14 of us there :)

All in all it was a fun night, and a great way to get into the Christmas spirit!