We started the month with a ward Christmas party which was held outside! It was a really well-planned fun event. The food was so good, which I think is the key to any successful gathering. They had live music, minute-to-win-it-games, a dance taught to the kids, a visit from Santa, and a nativity.
We buckled down and bought a full-sized Christmas tree from el Home Depot. Annie and I were very excited. Scotty was ambivalent. Aaron was borderline hostile. He was and always will be completely happy and satisfied with a Charlie Brown sized Christmas tree.
We went to downtown Round Rock and saw this Christmas tree. It was hollow inside, but still cool. The city also did a good job of wrapping lights around all of the regular trees to make them look twinkly and pretty. It was kinda weird, though, to see Christmas lights on trees that still had a lot of their leaves.
All this year we've been doing a little kindergarten co-op with these three girls and Scotty. It's been really fun. It's interesting to watch the dynamic between these four kids. Being the only boy, Scotty is pretty popular:) We made snowmen out of bananas.
There was real snow, too!! Annie came home from Activity Days convinced that it was going to snow because one of her little friends had said it only needed to get 9 degrees colder. Then it would be freezing, and the rain would turn into snow. I looked at the weather, and there wasn't any snow predicted. Annie was devastated. She wanted me to be devastated, too. The fact that I wasn't made her even more devastated. She prayed, in tears, for snow. I told her, "We don't always get exactly what we pray for. You should pray for Heavenly Father to comfort you and help you even if there isn't any snow." She didn't like the sound of that.
But the very next day, Aaron came home from work, we all ate dinner, then he casually mentioned that it had been snowing his whole way home from work. The kids busted out their snow stuff and played outside for the rest of the evening. They even managed to make a snowman. It's good to be reminded that sometimes prayers are answered with exactly what we want.
Annie had a little observation day at her dance class. She had a great time with Miss Jenni from our ward. This class really did help her to become more coordinated and aware of her movement. Hopefully we can build on that by putting her in basketball soon. We've gotta make use of that height!
Aaron and I finally used the gift card to a local restaurant called Urban Picnic that my mom got Aaron for his birthday. It was sandwiches and cake balls. Very yummy! Aaron had the BLT; I had the turkey avocado cream cheese. And we both got the pina colada cake balls.The kids went to a Polar Express activity camp thingy while we were on our date. We had lots of dates in December. This one plus an adults only white elephant gift exchange and Aaron's work party.
Aaron's work party was interesting. First of all, I felt under-dressed. It was a cocktail party, but I wasn't really informed of that fact. Anyway, I got to meet all of the people Aaron works with and his boss. They were nice and down-to-earth and normal. It was really good to put faces with names. Most people were drinking alcohol which is also just, you know, a somewhat unusual experience for Mormons from Utah. The food was really good, but the plates were teeny-weeny. I didn't get filled up. It was an interesting mix of people because there were tech/software nerds mixed with marketing/business people. And I felt like I could definitely tell who was who. Overall, it was quite a young crowd.
Anyway, I met the wife of one of Aaron's coworkers, and we were basically the same person. I was like, "We have two kids." Her too. "A boy and a girl." Her too. "I homeschool them." Her too. "We live in Round Rock." Diddo. "I came from a family of eight kids." Her too. The only difference was that she was Catholic. Oh, and she wasn't under-dressed. She seemed like an awesome person. Meeting her was definitely the highlight of the evening. She took her religion seriously. I love meeting people who aren't Mormon who take their religion seriously. I like meeting Mormons like that, too, but it's pretty common for Mormons to take their religion seriously. I feel really encouraged and happy when I see people who aren't Mormon taking their religion seriously. It just increases my faith that God is real, and he loves everyone's efforts to follow him.
A few days after Aaron's work party, we made the trek to Utah for Christmas. The day before we left, we received a package. It was really heavy and seemed sort of lumpy. It was from my parents. I suspected it was a Christmas gift, but I wanted to make sure it was something we would want to pack before I actually packed it. Turned out to be potatoes! Beautiful, huge, scrumptious Idaho potatoes! I'm sure glad we got the package before we left. I know from experience that potatoes don't do well being frozen and unfrozen repeatedly. Can't wait to cook these up.
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