Thursday, January 5, 2012

Pre Christmas Festivities

I was kind of  a slacker this year when it came to putting up my Christmas decorations and tree.  We didn't get our tree up until the second week of December, which was sad because I love Christmas decorations so much.  Bailey was really into decorating this year.  She wanted to help me get every decoration out of the box and put it up immediately.  She would have stayed up into the early hours of the morning decorating our house if I let her.  It was really cute though because when she came down in the morning after I decorated, she would ooh and aah over every new decoration she spotted.


 You can tell in this picture where Bailey likes to hang all of the ornaments :)
 She was so excited to put the star on our tree!

Another family tradition that we have with Brian's family is our annual Coronado Christmas.  We go down to Coronado Island and check out the Hotel Del.  There is a beautiful tree in their lobby and we always look at it and then walk down to the beach.  We usually eat lunch on the beach in December and talk about how cold the rest of the country is--hahaha.  This year it was slightly raining at our house, so we didn't pack the picnic lunches, but we were wrong.  It was the most beautiful weather that we've had down there in the past few years.  So instead of a picnic we just took our shoes off and walked around.  It was a great day.
 Our family pic in front of the tree--not our greatest, but that was as good as it got.
 Matthew, Vanessa, Emma, and Hanneka
 Adam & Teryn
 All the grandkids on the Bronson side
 A beautiful sunny December day
 Brooklynn is cheering in this picture
 A much better family picture :)
 They have all these new Dr. Suess statues outside the hotel.  This one Bailey recognized as the Grinch!

One night we decided to go down to the San Diego temple to see all the pretty lights.  It was a great night with just us.  Bailey really got into the nativity scenes--literally she ran up into the scene and wanted to ride the animals...oops!  It was just a quick trip, but well worth it.  I think we may do it every year.  I heard we need to add on the Mormon Battalion next year to hear the singing.
 Bailey wanted to pose with this donkey.
 I put Brooklynn in this cute snow baby bear outfit so she wouldn't get cold.
 It was adorable!
 They have this smaller nativity scene near the entrance that was very pretty.
 Besides taking pictures with the baby Jesus, it was a nice opportunity to talk to Bailey about whey we celebrate Christmas.  From that night on in her prayers at night, she would ask that Jesus would have a nice birthday party for Christmas.  She's getting better :)
 The lights truly were beautiful!
 This is when she literally got into the nativity scene and I had to take a picture.  She wanted to hold Mary's hands.
Since Bailey wasn't leaving, I had to run and put Brooklynn in the picture too.  Bailey really does love playing with all nativity sets and talks about baby Jesus a lot lately. 

Even though I had to teach through December 21st, we tried to plan fun festive activities for us to do as a family to put us in the holiday spirit.  It was hard working that close to Christmas, but we did have fun.

No comments: