Pre-Christmas Activities!

To start at the beginning of the month, we had a ward Christmas party and they asked our family to be a shepherd family for the play.  Our little family of boys and Mike and I sang The First Noel, by ourselves and  a Capella - and for those of you who know me and my family, singing in front of everyone is not a thing we do! :)  But it went well and we had a great time with the boys, especially our little sheep!  In the video, which I will try to load, while we were singing Turner kept trying to take Titus hat off and then he'd reach up for Mike and want him to hold him.

Another thing we ( I say we but really the boys and Dad) started was helping do "farm" chores for a couple in our ward, the Pace's.  They have some sheep and Mike decided to ask them if we could help.  Mike and I really want the boys to experience the joy and sacrifice of work and since we don't have animals of our own yet, Mike has been dying to get them out doing them.  So every morning before school he takes one of the boys and they feed the sheep and the dog and clean up a little.  They were so excited and I thought the excitement might wear off a little, but it hasn't one bit.  They have never complained.  Even on Christmas morning, the Paces offered to do it because we had little children and they didn't, but the boys wanted to do it especially on Christmas day.  So to be completely honest I was a little like "oh great" what about Christmas morning and them waking up and drinking our hot chocolate, but that was okay.
Christmas morning was awesome!  Our three little boys, as excited as they ever were, when they woke up didn't run to see what they had got but ran outside excited because it had snowed!  Another Christmas miracle for me! :) and they helped Dad shovel the driveway and then asked whose else should we do and then they went and all feed the sheep.  They are such great examples and I hope that they remember this Christmas and the meaning of serving and trying to be like Jesus and that is exactly what they did!
I was able to take the boys a couple times when Mike couldn't and it was so fun to see them go at and just know what to do and how it works!  I am so proud of them!  Here is one picture we have of that.

Playing Santa Claus in our hats

I love the way Turner was looking at Titus in this one.

Loving the stuffed snowman . . .they would throw, tackle, wrestle and do whatever they could with this snowman which we repeatedly told them it was not a toy,but they never seemed to understand!!!

Going to help at Dixon's school with Gingerbread house making and watching his program!!

Of course Shookie came!!  The boys loved this one that he left them a little surprise in the bathroom!

And last but not least, I got around to making a card this year.  I figured we had a picture so we'd better use it!