Christmas is Coming!!

 December so far: These past two weeks of December have been busy!! We've been trying to get a lot of Christmas fun packed in before the big day comes and here is a little bit of what we've been up to.

Getting the Tree - The first Monday in December we went to get our Christmas tree! It was a fun time and celebrated with getting donuts again afterwards, which is turning into a delicious little tradition!

 I wanted to try and get a picture of Nate holding all 4 kiddos. They all managed to stay up for a second but Avenlea never turned around so we can't see her cute face, but there were lots of giggles in our attempts to capture this funny picture!

 Family picture with the tree! Poor Chloe got out voted and we decided on a different tree than the one she picked out. It's beautiful and Nate managed to drill a pretty straight hole in the bottom for the tree stand to go into

 Daddy and the babies eating donuts

 Mommy got one too!

 Zeyta really loved hers!

Hip Hop and Gymnastics performance: Chloe and Blain got to perform on stage for a Children's justice center event. Other than the fact that Blain's teacher put him in the wrong class and he had to "wing it" on stage, it was fun to watch them. Blain was such a champ even though the routine wasn't what he practiced, he rolled, hopped, cartwheeled and did handstands with the other kids in the group.

 Chloe did so good remembering her dance! I was so impressed with her worms and handstands and you could tell she really knew her moves!

 My cute little performers!

 Blain at his practice the week before the show

Cookies, snow, and ornament making - I made a batch of salt dough, cookie dough and rounded up all the snow gear for a fun day! They made hand print ornaments, cut out and decorated sugar cookies, and had an epic snow ball fight with mommy. It's nice to remember that winter can be fun, sometimes it just takes a little more thought and preparation :)

 Avenlea with her hair curled for church. What a little beauty

 rolling out the dough

 sharing the cookie dough bowl

Blain painting his hand print ornament

Stockings hung by the chimney with care (they are playing mermaids and deep sea diver, a recent favorite game)

 It was a lot of fun building a snow man and just watching those kids play! I got hit by at least 50 snowballs over the period of time we were outside, but I got them back with some pretty good throws myself!

 Zeyta was so cute in her giant snow overalls and mittens. She loved eating the snow and pretending to get Blainy when he was doing snow angels

 The cows were so interested in all the commotion in the backyard! Nate let Zeyta pet Bella for a bit then had to go back inside because he was getting ambushed by snowballs and wasn't in his snow gear!

 Sweetie Zeyta in a new Christmas dress from Grandma

 And enjoying her cream of wheat and toast, eating with a spoon and dipping her own toast! She's such a mess afterwards I take her straight to the bath! I have to plan cream of wheat breakfast when I know we'll have time for baths immediately after!

Wrestling - Blain's wrestling season has come to a close and he did amazing! He had a tournament where they divided the boys into weight classes and experience levels and Blain did great against the 5 boys in his group. He pinned all 5 of the boys he wrestled against and managed to escape getting pinned in any of the matches too! It was a non competitive tournament so they wrestled until the buzzer sounded and Blain had fun against those tough little boys! It probably helps having a Daddy who is an amazing wrestler as a coach ;) But Blain loved wrestling ("I'm kinda good at wrestling" - Blain) and was thrilled to get his medal at the end of the tournament. Today he asked when he gets to wrestle again so I think he'll be more willing to sign up when Little Wasps Wrestling time comes around again.

 Blain working hard!

 He even got to wrestle one of his buddies!

 Pinning one of his toughest opponents

 Sometimes Nate had to tell him to let the other little boy up if he was holding him down too long and the other boy couldn't get up. What a stud!

 Blain with his award and golden medal with his coach

 I'm surprised he didn't sleep with that medal he loves it so much!

 Blain with a friend on his team

 I think they both had a blast during Blain's first wrestling season!

For Posterity...

 Our Christmas card from this year - I messed up and somehow only ordered enough for siblings and parents this year so I didn't get to send out as many as I would have liked. I'll have to double check my order next year!

Blain and Aunt Teresa at em's baby shower

Zeyta with Grandma Peggy and Grandpa Tony Moyeda