december stuff

Time to catch up on our blog.

Brooklyn has been taking a little gymnastics class with Laura and a couple of her friends (and their moms) once a week.

Austin had a day off work early in December and came to see the fun.

As you can tell, "gymnastics" is used fairly loosely here...

...and here...

...and here...

...though you have to start somewhere with two-year-olds, right? You could interpret this as the balance beam?

Which means this would be the toddler version of the vault. Nailing the landing is key.

And these are floor exercises. Future olympian.

All kidding aside, Brooklyn has loved going to the class. Her favorite part is the end where everyone gets a "hand stamp" and a cookie.

We still have the little Christmas tree that Laura had in college. It was our humble little tree early in the month while we were deciding whether to get a real tree or an artificial one. We use this tree to put up all our childhood ornaments. It's cute.

We whimped out and went artificial. Though it was tempting to go chop a tree down ourselves -- given our geographic location and the abundance of beautiful evergreens -- we found a great post-black-friday deal on a fake tree and decided to go the easy route.

Brooklyn enjoyed looking at the shiny ornaments...

...and she thought the tree's "blanket" was very soft.

She even helped Daddy put the star at the top of the tree.

All done!

We have a few traditions here in the area -- if you can call two years in a row a tradition. One is going to a nativity display at one of the LDS church buildings in Bellevue, where they have hundreds of nativity sets from around the world.

We thought this one (Dutch?) would look great in Austin's mom's kitchen.

We also go to a different LDS building in Sammamish, where the youth do a live nativity performance outside. Inside they do cookies and hot cocoa.

The city of Redmond does an event called "Redmond Lights" where they light a tree by the town hall and then have a walk along the river trail where they have music, lights, hot cocoa, and warm fires along the way. It was the coldest we have ever been up here. Austin was having flashbacks to his mission in Ukraine. Brrrrrrr.

The city of Bellevue does a music and lights show on one of their downtown streets between two shopping malls called "Snowflake Lane" -- they have people dressed up as winter animals, snow princesses, and nutcrackers. We went with our friends the Sparks again and had a great time.

We didn't do anything that the city of Seattle put on, but one of Austin's work friends invited us to a party and we saw this. Here comes a lame joke, so be forewarned... it's probably the biggest needle you'll ever see under a Christmas tree.

We went to the outdoor mall near our place where they had a little Christmas train.

Brooklyn was very excited. The driver went very fast and did lots of crazy turns -- it was nearly a roller coaster!

We finished the ride safely and even went back later with some of our friends.

We did a little looking online to see if there were any local houses that go all out with Christmas lights. The kind of stuff you would never dream of doing yourself. The kind of stuff that gets people on those TLC shows about crazy hobbies and hoarding weird stuff. But the kind of stuff you can't help but smile at when you see kids all excited about Christmas.

There were lights, trains, and all kinds of exciting Christmasy things. It was very much like a place that we go when we visit Laura's family in California, so it felt like we were keeping the tradition in our own way.

Brooklyn got a Charlie Brown Christmas book from Grandma Taylor so she was excited to see this part.

Still, all the lights and music and trains and toys weren't without a little perspective.

We went to a Saturday Christmas brunch at church and the big guy in the red suit made an appearance at the end. Brooklyn was very excited to get a "candy can" -- and was apparently a bit more comfortable hanging out with Santa than she was last year.

Brooklyn got a few gifts which she was able to open early. Among them was ornaments from Grandma Carole...

...and a beautiful Christmas pop-up book from Nathan and Daniel!

We had fun getting all our presents together -- even doing our own little custom tags to match our tree and wallpaper. We enjoy doing gifts for each other and family -- Austin has remarked that not only is it symbolic of the gifts the wise men brought to the baby Jesus, but giving gifts to each other gives us a small glimpse into how Christ and our Heavenly Father must feel when they are able to bless us.