Christmas in Kentucky

We had a great Christmas season in Kentucky this year filled with fun and service and good memories. Here are the highlights!

Ethan and Lydia enjoyed decorating the tree this year. They got a little carried away however and decorated it with their cars, hair toys, and little people. :) Hopefully we got all the toys taken out since we were still finding cars in the tree as we were taking it apart to put it away.

With the MOMS Club we went to an assisted living home and sang Christmas carols to the residents. They loved it and so did we!

Here is a picture of a game that Ethan and Lydia like to play. I cut up apples and put them on the counter and then the apples "mysteriously go missing" as they hide under the table and eat them. They love to ask me, "Mom, what happened to all your apples?" And I play along and they love it. :)


Ethan earned money this month by sleeping without his beloved silly monkey that he's had since he was a baby and as a result stopped sucking his thumb at night. He earned 50 cents each night the first week and 25 cents each night the second week. After paying tithing he used his money for his first big purchase of a Lego airplane and we were both happy. :)

My kids had fun decorating sugar cookies. I was in charge of a cookie decorating MOMS Club activity and let my kids do it at home first so I would be prepared to do it at the library. The cookies were yummy and the activity turned out well. 

Our friends the Huxels invited us to join them in their yearly tradition of decorating gingerbread houses. Ethan decided he was going to build a gingerbread airplane....and he did. :) It was really fun and I would love to do it myself next year.

Jason and I went to Jason's company party again this year and ate a very yummy dinner. It's fun to get all dressed up every once in a while.

Ethan had his preschool Christmas program and this year he was a wise man....very fitting. He was actually going to be a shepherd at first, but I guess the hat kept falling off the other little boy and since Ethan has a nice big, round head, he was immediately promoted to wise man. :)

Ethan and Lydia jumping off Ethan's bed onto a mattress.

One day I took Ethan and Lydia to the Cincinnati Children's Museum with some friends. They rode a Christmas train, sat on Santa's lap, and Ethan built a cool car with the help of a kind engineer grandpa who was there with his grandsons.

We also stopped by Dad's work to say hi since we were just down the street.

I also helped with Ethan's preschool Christmas party and brought a candy cane bead craft and Bingo game. The girl in the picture actually used to live in our house, but they built a new house somewhere else in the neighborhood and she ended up in Ethan's preschool class. Small world. :)

Since our family stayed put for Christmas this year and we didn't have any visitors, we did a few extra fun family things. One was a combined trip to the Columbus Temple and COSI museum. We watched a planetarium show and the kids got to play while Jason and I switched off working at the temple. Ethan loved the cool Hot Wheels exhibit they had there.

Ethan was really excited when he got his disk to keep spinning on a larger disk. He was literally jumping for joy! :)

Christmas Eve we acted out the Christmas story while Dad read it from the Bible, ate yummy cinnamon rolls with hot chocolate and read "The Night Before Christmas."

 Christmas morning we all received plenty of presents and enjoyed playing with them throughout the day. Ethan loved his Legos and Ki'nex. Lydia loved her new baby and doctor's equipment. We were all "sick" many times that day with fevers and such, but she "fixed" us with shots and band-aids. That evening we enjoyed a lovely dinner with our friends the Scotts and the missionaries. It was a wonderful day.

Ethan got a new fort building set that was fun to put together. He even slept under it the first night.

After Christmas we visited The Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky about 45 minutes from our house. It was impressive to see the actual size of the ark as recorded in the Bible and to see some of the ideas of how the animals were taken care of, etc.

 They also had a glice skating rink there that we all tried. It wasn't actual ice so it wasn't as cold or wet, but that made it a little harder to skate on. Still fun to try and the kids liked it.

Over the break Ethan was also excited that he was able to learn to ride his bike without training wheels after learning to balance on his Strider bike. After a while of practicing he also wiggled his tooth out and lost his second tooth. After commenting to him that is was such a big day that he had both learned to ride his bike and lost a tooth he said, "Yep, I'm pretty much a grown man now." Ha ha. Cute boy.

We rang in the New Year playing games with the Huxels and others. It was so fun that we hope to do it again some time. We have been very blessed in 2018 and we look forward to good things to come in 2019.