It's the start of the Christmas season

Monday, being December 1st, begins the countdown to Christmas! The kids are beside themselves with excitement and have been toting around their "Santa notes" with wishes galore. Caroline is learning to write and it is so sweet to watch her form her words on the paper - she can ask how to spell a word and for the most part knows all the letters now which is great for her - she has finally caught the writing/reading letters bug. Lindsay is so funny - she started writing her list quite tiny because she remembers last year running out of room on her paper. Now, she doesn't have enough wishes to fill her paper. This makes me nervous because she has things on her list like a cell phone, heelies, iPod, Crystal Chandelier, camera, etc. Any one of those items could break Santa's bank so we will see what happens!

Tonight the girls wanted to do a Star Wars play for us. We said it could be our FHE lesson if they incorporated Gospel principles into the lesson. That shouldn't be hard since it is a well known fact that Yoda was modeled after Spencer W. Kimball and The Force in Star Wars is modeled after the Priesthood! Hahaha!! Anyway, I wondered what they would come up with. Lindsay's lesson: "Star Wars is like the Gospel because Star Wars has the Force and The Force helps you to live. The Gospel is like Star Wars because the Gospel helps you to live. Now, welcome to our play."
We had Lindsay, a Jedi Knight with a purple light saber and Padme with her blue life saver. Earlier that day we had made light sabers with heavy duty fabric roll tubes, construction paper, and silver wrapping paper. They loved them though I think "real light sabers" are going to make their way to their Wish Lists. The Jedi Knight wore tall boots, a pink tunic shirt and belt, and mommy's robe which she shed with dramatic flair before her battle. Padme is a queen and wears lovely layers that resemble a Japanese Kimono. Our Padme wore (from the undermost layer out) shorts, T-shirt, her new silver dress, sweater, mommy's dress, and silver shoes. We enjoyed our battle show immensely - Caroline kept telling Lindsay to go easy on her but Caroline was whacking away with that life saver of hers!

A Jedi Knight and Padme (Queen Amidala)

The Scenery...stars and ships flying through space

The audience. We gave them rave reviews, of course.

We then broke out the new snowman mugs and had hot cocoa and vanilla ice cream as our treat.


Finally, we got to begin the first night our our advent tradition. We have wrapped story books under the tree and the girls take turns choosing a book to open and we read the story together. We also have our Christmas binder with a scripture, song, and story for each of the 24 days before Christmas. Baby Kate discovered the Christmas tree lights and gifts below - she was facinated and we were equally facinated and entertained watching her!

Merry Christmas everyone!