I did not take a very good pic of the room, but they made the event a lot of fun this year! When we arrived they handed us two raffle tickets and some fake money. They told us to go play some games with our money to try to win extra raffle tickets that we could then use to possibly win one of five prizes. They hired out a casino company to run table games, and it was pretty fun to watch everyone get into it. I didn't want to risk losing any of my money, because I could cash it out for raffle tickets, and I really wanted to win a raffle prize, so I didn't gamble any of it. ;) Josh played two different games and won! We put our raffle tickets into two of the five prize options. We figured we'd have better odds just choosing one or two things to try to win. One was to win dinner and 6 tickets to a U of O men's basketball game, and the other for a $500 REI gift card. The other prizes were wonderful too, but those seemed like the most fun to us. And we won the basketball tickets and dinner!! We were so surprised! It was a lot of fun. :)
They also served a lovely dinner that we got to enjoy with Josh's co-workers. What a fun date night!
My friend Janice sent us some more hair clips from the cute Etsy shop she runs. I loved this clip and snapped some pics of Selah wearing it first. I still need to photograph the others, but I have a lot of fun doing this with Selah. I'm not sure if she'll still want to next year, since she's getting older, but it's been fun.
We had a wonderful time celebrating four family birthdays! It was Papa's, Matt's, Ben's & Grandma's 80th! We made a big deal about her 80th! My mom had this sash made that says, "Lady... you're 80!" Isn't that cute? We enjoyed snacks & Wayne's amazing chili, cake, ice cream, a game about Grandma's past 80 years, and we did a little photo booth. :) Happy birthday everyone!
The 82 year old birthday boy! :)
Birthday boys Ben and Matt blowing out candles.
My best friend! :) I sure love this guy!
After the party that evening our friends Aaron and Val came to visit, while on their way home to Washington. It was great catching up with them! The kids had fun watching a movie together.
We got this cute idea online, and then enhanced it with our own touches. :) Selah took off with this and made four ornaments right away. Then we helped the boys make theirs.
First we googled winter animal silhouettes, and a nativity silhouette, and put them all on one page and printed it out, to give ourselves templates. Then Selah ran one of our lamination sheets through the laminator and "made" a piece of thin transparent plastic to be able to draw on. She laid the laminated sheet on top of one of these silhouettes and traced an image with a sharpie, and colored it in. Then she traced around a drinking glass to cut a round circle around the image. You can see a finished fox there next to the scissors.
Jude enjoyed this craft, too!
Selah poured salt into the bottom of these ornaments and then gently rolled up each plastic pic and tucked it down into the ornament and set it in the snow (salt). We used a pencil to push against the very bottom of the pics, to help stand them up perfectly straight. Then we clipped off a tiny piece of a Christmas branch and set it inside, along with a tiny bit of fake berries (we had a super long garland of them that I bought at Cost Plus World Market years ago).
Selah made me this nativity scene and it's my favorite! I just love it so much, and am excited to hang it on the tree each year, remembering this day.
Old Saint Nic came to visit too. ;)
It snowed all around Oregon this week, and much to Selah's dismay we didn't get any exciting amount of it. Just a tiny dusting on our roof. So Selah suggested that we make our own snowflakes, and we did! We laminated them and taped them around.
I sure love making Christmas memories with my kids!
Last weekend my mom offered to take the kids for a night so that Josh and I could enjoy a date night (Thank you Mom!) We had a great time going out to dinner and I ordered a warm coffee drink. I always love seeing the courthouse at Christmas time.
The kids showed how to make ornaments during their presentations at school last week. Ben gave his to his teacher and it was so cute to see his joy in doing just that.
Then at the end of school that day lots of kids brought rockets to set off in the parking lot. It was so much fun to watch! Some were really well made and shot sooo high into the sky. Ben brought along our rocket and had a great time showing everyone how it worked. ;)
And just because I like to remember these things, I wanted to post this writing of Jude's today. Even a year ago something like this would've taken him a really, really long time. Today I asked him to write about a silly Christmas cookie and what it would look like or smell like, and he wrote this out. He's come a long way in the past two years and is picking up speed now. So proud of each step along the way...
I hope you're having a wonderful December!!
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