Happy Birthday Jesus Party

Leah's preschool class celebrated with a birthday party for Jesus on their last day of school before Christmas break (Friday, Dec. 14th).  We signed up to bring goodie bags for the celebration!  Instead of exchanging gifts with each other, each child brought a gift to be donated to the Salvation Army.  I loved this idea!

It took me a minute, but I soon noticed that Leah was sitting at a table full of boys.  I asked her teacher about this and she said that Leah walked up to the tables, looked for the most perfect looking place setting and chose her seat accordingly.  This sounds EXACTLY like my girl!  It just turned out that the perfect place setting was at the boys table!  She didn't seem to mind one single bit!

Time for musical chairs and dancing!  Leah's kind of famous around preschool for her mad dancing skills so I was excited to get to see her in full force.  My girl has some moves!

The goodie bags and reindeer food that Leah took!

Christmas Program

Thursday, December 13th was the night of Leah's Christmas Program at preschool.

She had a very special role this year.  Three students from each class were chosen to be a part of the nativity as the Christmas Story was read aloud, and Leah was chosen to be one of two shepherds.  She was the most adorable little shepherd I've ever seen!  She was so very proud of her role and loved every single minute of being on stage in front of everyone!

After the Christmas Story was read, the "actors" joined the rest of their class to sing a few Christmas songs....."Glory Be To God in the Highest", "Feliz Navidad" and "Oh Come Let Us Adore Him" which they signed as well.  Super cute!

My girl rocked her shepherd costume!  She was originally supposed to be the green shepherd but some last minute costume adjustments landed her the "reddish brownish" shepherd gig.  She wasn't too happy about this last minute switch so I kept telling her that she was going to "rock that reddish brownish shepherd costume"!  That she did!!!

And just a few pictures from after the program!

 Leah and her biggest fan!

 I say this all the time, but I love my little family oh so much!

I tried to get a picture of my cuties in front of the Christmas tree when we got home and out of thirty pictures, this was the best I got.  Leah poses like a model and Lane, well, that's a whole nother story!

Polar Express

All Aboooooard!  On Friday, December 14th, we took our third annual voyage to the North Pole via the Polar Express.  This is definitely one of my very favorite Christmas traditions that we do as a family each year!  This year we were joined by the Mullikins which made it that much more fun!  Laney Bug wasn't feeling the best (turns out the poor little guy had RSV.....we had no idea at the time, just thought it was a cold) but he was a trooper!  The last two years we've been on the Katy car, but this year we were on the Gingerbread car!  We loved it so much more (we had a bit more room that years past) so we will definitely try to get on this car next year as well!

All ready to board!

All Aboard!

Lane was just a teeny tiny little thing last year and rode the train in the Bjorn!  This year he was a wiggle worm!

Lane's very favorite thing to do on the train was hang his head out the window.  Probably not the best idea and might be the reason he got sicker than he was.  It was pretty cold out, but bless his heart, he thought it was the funnest thing ever!

Yummy cookies and hot cocoa!  Leah loves the tapping "hot chocolate" dancers!

Leah made sure the conductor punched all of our tickets!

Following along as the story was read aloud!  She really enjoyed that part this year and knew exactly when to turn the pages!

Tanner and Dillon came to sit with us during the story!

The hobo's always one of my favorites!  Leah thought he was hilarious this year!

We made it to the North Pole!!!!!

One of my many failed attempts at a group photo (minus Megan who was all warm and snuggly)!

We were so excited to see Santa and receive the first gift of Christmas, our silver bells! I keep all of our bells that we get each year in a vase that I get out each Christmas.  I love it!

Fun in the depot after we made it back to Sacramento!