December

 We started out December celebrating Casey's birthday.  He picked out a key lime pie at Publix and we had a party🥳

                                          

                                   

 I found a few "dad" gifts for the party. His favorite was the neck light. Casey likes flashlights of all kinds, so I knew it would probably be a hit😂  

Casey has told me all year that he wanted to take a few trees down in our yard.  Well, he decided December would be a good time to start.  He was very proud of himself in that he directed it exactly where he wanted it.  Casey said, "it was one of the best drops he's ever done."  Ry helped in the chopping.  It took a few weeks to get it all cleaned up.

 

We had a beautiful double rainbow one afternoon...

December is always a busy time and fun time.  I always make cookies for school and home for decorating.  

I also found a recipe for gingerbread playdough and made it for our class.  We played with it and then I saw this on pinterest and made individual packs to send home with the kids at the end of the week. So fun, and it smelled so good(surprisingly nobody tried to eat it)!  

Every year someone puts out ornaments at our local park in this same tree.  Usually it's one or two ornaments, but this year the entire tree was decorated. I love it!🎄

There is a family in my hometown that sells these trees for decorating gravesites.  Last year they secretly decorated my brother's gravesite as a gift to my family. They said they would continue to do it every year. My mom cries each time she sees it all decorated.  It is such a small gesture, but leaves such a huge impact of generosity and love.  I'm so thankful for people who are genuine and kind.  It makes all the difference💕💚

We had to postpone everyone's arrival for Christmas break by a few days, because I got the 24hr. stomach bug.  Thankful it was short lived.

Once everyone arrived we had volleyball tournaments, football games and badminton championships.  The weather was so nice and warm we were able to spend a good amount of time outdoors. 

We had our annual Cooking Decorating on Christmas Eve along with a few finger foods for dinner

            

   

                    

                  

Games were played

And Santa came...

      

                                                               We had some early risers

And we enjoyed the rest of Christmas day with activities and watching everyone enjoy their gifts(especially Josh)😆.

We also went out to eat a couple times 

And went into Duluth to a really good Korean BBQ we enjoy, as well as a Japanese bookstore that's a favorite.

                                                     

                    

                             We stopped at a whole foods and I found myself a treat😁These are so good!

They have really great pens that I always stock up on when we go to this bookstore in Duluth!

                          Our last celebration was New Years Eve. We all made it until midnight🥳🎉