The Mott Family: December 2013

We started out December with our annual nativity picture. This year we changed things up a little bit and moved Cindy to the angel position (does that mean she’s officially growing up if she’s too big to play Baby Jesus?). We replaced her with a little doll (Baby Jesus was much better behaved this year), and Lizza finally got a chance to be Mary.

Cindy was pretty happy with her new role as the angel.

Such squishy cuteness.

Rachel and Henry as our fancy wiseman and wisewoman:

Oliver the Shepherd:

Lizza as Mary:

And Tristan as Joseph. He’s such a good sport about doing this each year.

Just because they’re cute, here are our nativity pictures from the other years:

2012. Cindy was a giant 2-year old baby Jesus.

2011.

2010. This was our first year doing it. Cindy was 6 weeks old.

Then the rest of December was spent decorating the house, making snowflakes and gingerbread houses, and enjoying the Christmas lights in Austin.

Henry was my special decorating helper this year. He loved setting up each nativity and putting the ornaments on the tree. He picked our tree out all by himself this year – I had my eye on a taller, thinner tree, but Henry was adamant that we needed a “big, fat triangle-shaped tree”. He was very proud of it, and insisted on helping me carry it into the house and everything.

Since we don’t really get any snow outside, we make it feel wintery by hanging lots of snowflakes inside. Henry even learned to cut some himself this year:

Decorating our gingerbread house:

I guess I’ve been living in Texas too long, because I made lots of green frosting to spread around the house for grass, and it didn’t even cross my mind until it was all done that in most places there would be snow all around the house. We quickly sprinkled some shredded coconut around to help it feel more snowy.

Here are the kids with another gingerbread house that Daniel made as part of a team activity at work. It was much fancier than the one we made at home.

Trail of Lights in Austin:

In addition to all the Christmas-y activities, we also did other fun things in December.

Like slide down the stairs in made-up roller coaster contraptions (Rachel told me it was safe because she included seatbelts):

And make toy houses out of paper and tape.

And here’s Oliver playing some Madden football on his first day of Christmas break:

December 22 – Tristan’s 13th birthday. Can’t believe I have a teenager now.

All the kids gathered around to watch him open a few presents before we left for church:

Creamy white chicken enchiladas for his birthday dinner. He loves any kind of Mexican food.

And he doesn’t really like cake, so he chose to just have some mint-chocolate chip ice-cream for his birthday dessert. He’s a pretty easy kid that way (and every way, really).

We love opening up some of our Christmas presents early, to make the whole week of Christmas fun. This year we got a lot of puzzles from different cities we’ve been to on our trips. Here’s the completed Washington, DC one:

Christmas Eve – presents from grandparents.

Christmas morning:

Every year the kids draw names and get a special gift for the person they drew:

Cindy and Henry all dressed up:

We surprised Tristan and Oliver this year with lots of t-shirts from their favorite sports teams. This is pretty much all they wear now.

Typical Christmas morning pictures –

Spiderman working on a new lego set, breakfast of stocking treats at his side, with the tree and box of wrapping paper mess in the background.

Princess Anna playing with her Frozen dolls and blocks:

After Christmas:

Henry doing some more home decorating with the dinosaur mosaics he got from Christmas. He surprised me by hanging these up all on his own. He was a little bit sad that they didn’t get to be a permanent art display.

Henry and Cindy setting up a Spiderman/Little People nativity scene. I wish I had been videotaping during this. Somehow the nativity story had changed to involve Spiderman, and he was doing lots of heroic stunts and rescuing people. In the second picture Cindy is yelling at Henry because she said Spiderman was being too wild around Baby Jesus. She was probably right.

Then at the very end of December, on New Year’s Eve, my parents and my two youngest brothers came to visit.

They also brought along their dog, Yankee, much to the delight of all of my children:

My kids had such a fun time hanging out with their uncles.

They also got in some quality time with my parents, which made me happy. I miss our days of living close to grandparents.

Playing around at the park with one of the kid’s new nerf bow and arrows that they got for Christmas. We took turns shooting the arrows into the air while everyone else tried to catch them.