Class parties and more!

December continued to be a busy time with lots of parties and other festive activities.

For Matthew's party, his class had a book exchange and then they decorated gingerbread houses. The whole class had Rudolph noses for some reason. I'm not sure why.

Putting together his gingerbread house.

With the finished product.

Megan's class actually had three parties in one day. First, they had a party to celebrate her teacher's birthday, which was December 20th. Then they had their winter party. Then they had a movie night to celebrate having a great quarter (they normally have a toy store at the end of the quarter where they can use the "Independence Bucks" they've earned for toys; this time they had the movie night where they used their bucks for treats to eat during the movie). I have quite a few pictures of the activities as her teacher shared a bunch of pictures with us.

Miss MacTurk blowing out the candle on her beautiful cake.

They had lots of fun activities. Here, Megan used crepe paper to wrap her friend Chloe up into a Christmas tree.

Megan as a Christmas tree with Miss MacTurk and Chloe.

Ornament game where they pushed ornaments back and forth between the two sides of the table.

Making an ornament necklace. They also decorated sugar cookies.

Book exchange.

They bought a bunch of snowballs from a local shaved ice store and had a great time throwing them at a snowman target (oh the things we do for snow!).

I love the look on Megan's face.

Throw that snowball!

Class photo.

Silly class photo.

Merry Christmas!

Grandma and Grandpa Martin came by for a visit. The kids showed off their musical talent with Sarah playing the cello and Megan and Matthew playing the guitar.

With Grandma and Grandpa.

We drove around to see Christmas lights including stopping by Christmas on Comstock. It's pretty impressive--all the houses on the street are lit and synchronized to music. They won a national award for the display last year. Anna was visiting Christmas on Comstock, too. 

It was snowing.

Matthew, Sarah and Megan loved playing in the snow.

We enjoyed walking up and down the street.

Santa even made an appearance.

We enjoyed decorating Christmas cookies.

U was quite proud of his "Macbeth" cookie.

Close up of the creation.

A lot of the time, I think it's a shame to eat U's wonderfully decorated cookies. For some reason, I didn't feel that way with this particular creation.