Life and Times of The Johnston family: "Gingerbread" Houses and Christmas Eve!

So I don't know why but I was not a big picture taker this year as I have been in the past, the kids had lots of cute Christmas shirts(though they always seemed to prefer to stay in their pj's) They both had twelve days of Christmas gifts, which was either a fun little Christmas toy, activity or craft, we played Christmas games did Christmas puzzles danced to lots of fun Christmas music read lots and lots of Christmas stories about both Santa and more importantly the birth of our Savior and I really emphasized that. But alas I have no pictures of it all, so this year you'll just have to know that we did lots of fun things the weeks leading up to Christmas(and pretty much took the month of December off from school) even though I don't have photographic evidence. ;) I did however take pictures of Elizabeth decorating her sugar cookie Sophia the First castle, that we saw for a good price and just had to get for Elizabeth and she was thrilled to have it! Then when Devin was up from his nap they both decorated graham cracker houses. Elizabeth had soooo much fun with it all and took it quite seriously, she wanted her houses to look their best! Devin apparently will not touch frosting and wigged out when a little got on him while trying to put an M&M on his house...he tried a few more times then just told me what to put where. When eating the candy....yes he ACTUALLY ate some of the candy he would wipe off any frosting with a napkin first! OCD!!! But in the end he did enjoy it. Now to Christmas Eve. Since we had already done my parents Christmas party we had the whole day to do things. So in the morning we cleaned up and prepared for Santa to come to a clean house. Let Elizabeth help us bake the cookies for Santa, which she did meticulously! Then after Devin's nap we went and visited Tony's grandma Nelson at the care center, she has Alzheimer's, and her health is....well it's bad so we wanted to go see her and let the kids see her while she's still here on earth with us. And we are so glad we did! it made our day and hers! Well hers as long as she remembers it! Then we went and visited with his grandpa Nelson at his house and had a pretty good visit with him. We were going to stop by Temple Square on the way back home but I wasn't feeling great(stomach flu) and Devin was concerned about missing Santa(as it was getting dark and he associates that with night and Santa comes at night so...) it was dinner time and we figured it'd be super crowded and so we wouldn't be able to enjoy it anyway so we just headed home. We picked up McDonald's for the kids and Tony(I had no desire to eat anything) on the way and let them enjoy their happy meals while watching a Christmas show. Then we opened elf gifts upstairs with my parents. We all got new pj's, slippers and books(or a gift card for a new book) and the kids each got a cute bath squirt toy! After putting the kids in their new adorable matching pj's we set out milk and cookies for Santa and baby carrots for the reindeer. Tony read the kids "Twas the Night Before Christmas" while they ate a Christmas cookie, then they put the magic key on the front door for Santa(as we don't have a chimney for him to come down) then the kids were off to bed and fell asleep in record time!

The sugar cookie castle!