Christmas Countback

With January half over, it's high time that I finally caught up with December happenings. Here are twelve favorite events in honor of the twelve days of Christmas.

Twelve. Our church Christmas breakfast where Brooklyn and Talia participated in the Nativity. Talia displayed her excellent crook-twirling skills as a shepherd while Brooklyn made a sweet Mary.

Eleven. A Day with Santa at the Tonaquint Nature Center.

Lucky Brooklyn won a package.

Thanking Santa for his gift.

Ten. Shortly before Christmas, we celebrated the open house for a pilot project of highly-efficient affordable homes with energy improvements that Jason helped initiate. Grown-ups are excited that the homes use half as much energy as your average home. Kids like Talia are excited to have a place where they can run.

Nine. Brooklyn's Daisy Troop made posters showing ways they can take care of themselves and the world around them. Brooklyn designed an interactive poster where we could remove trash from the dolphin's ocean home by doing good deeds for others.

Here she is getting a few patches from her troop leader, Cari.

Eight. One evening we enjoyed having this troop leader and her cute family over for dinner. While we forgot to take a picture of the people, we snagged a photo of the adorable penguins they brought.

Seven. Luckily we did grab a photo when some other long-time friends from college dropped by. Adam and Celeste, it was so good to see you!

I'm probably biased, but I think we've raised a pretty cute crop of kids. The last time our families got together, Brooklyn and Eva were barely a month old, having been born just a few weeks apart.

Six. Of course, a highlight of our Christmas was having Papa Kay and NomiAnn come to visit. I had to chuckle when I came home one day and found Papa Kay giving the girls civics lessons using flashcards of the U.S. Presidents.

When he discovered that they didn't really know our National Anthem, he decided to rectify the situation with some hands on, edible learning.

Looks yummy!

Caution: too much sugar can make you go wild!

Five. After calming down a bit, we really enjoyed the live nativity at Tuacahn, particularly the camels.

Filling in the gaps to create our own nativity.

Four. Papa Kay always arrives with fun gimmicks and toys. These stomp rockets were a blast! (Literally.)

Three. At Dixie Sun Elementary, Santa arrives not by sleigh, but by helicopter, bearing gifts of a thousand books for the school library.

Two. The first grade Christmas program was delightful. It was wonderful watching our children sing, sign, dance, and play the drums with such unabashed joy. What a marvelous thing, to sing with delight in that beautiful stage before self-consciousness sets in. It didn't matter if Brooklyn remembered the words or sang on key or drummed with the beat or even if her belly was peeking out below her shirt. Christmas was coming, and life was good.

One. While the resolution is poor, that's Brooklyn singing front and center. Feliz Navidad!

Here's wishing you all a merry, merry Christmas!