Gingerbread Dog Houses

In honor of Chunky, we made Gingerbread Dog Houses this year ...

Hawthorn Academy Christmas Concerts

We attended two school Christmas concerts this year.  Eric's was on Wednesday night and Brandon's was on Thursday night. 

 

 

Along with Brandon's 4th grade concert he also performed with the Beginning Band.  He is getting quite good on his trumpet.

 

Santa

Eric & Kyle were very excited to visit with Santa this year and to tell him that they have been good boys are ask him for a set of boxing gloves this year.  Brandon still wrote his Santa letter this year and is fine to put out cookies and milk but felt that he was just too old to go and sit on Santa's lap.

 

 

The Lights at Temple Square

On the first day of December, to ring in the Christmas season, we went up to Temple Square to see the lights.  It was wonderful!

 

The Elves @ Gardner Village

This year the Sintay's & O'Berry's joined us on our annual visit to the Gardner Village Elves.

 

 

Decorating the Gingerbread House

Every year we decorate a gingerbread house as one of our Christmas Traditions.  Last year it didn't go so well and the year before was worse (it took us a couple tries that year).  So I finally got smart.  I picked up a prebuilt house after Christmas last year on clearance and packed it away with the Christmas decorations.  So this year all we had to do was get out the house and it was already built for us.  We just had to decorate!  It went much better this year!

Elves @ Gardner Village

Another of our Christmas traditions is to go over to Gardner Village to see the Elves.

Brandon searched for the perfect tree at an elf tree lot.

Eric did some caroling (he LOVES to sing) and stopped for an elf photo op!

Kyle wondered if his letter has made it to the North Pole yet?

Brandon and Eric were sad to find their names on Santa's Naughty List. :(

Kyle was just happy to not be on any list at this point.  Maybe there is hope for him still.

Then we stopped at the Naborhood Baker for a little something to warm us up!  It was a fun adventure!

Christmas Cookies

We have a lot of Christmas traditions that we love to do this time of year.  One of them is making Christmas cookies which the kids then take around to their friends.  We had a lot of fun this year. 

Brandon made a delicious batch of chocolate chip cookies almost entirely by himself!!



Eric helped me make sugar cookies! He ate more "M a M's" then made it on the cookies. :)



Kyle helped me make Triple Chocolate Peppermint Cookies! He was covered in green frosting.

 

And then they delivered their cookies.  It was fun.

The Christmas Lights @ Temple Square

We had a wonderful night tonight downtown at Temple Square, enjoying the Christmas lights.  They were incredible and the boys had such a great time.  We even got to see a little concert from a children's choir at the Assembly Hall.  Eric, our singer, especially loved that part. 

The Barnhisel Family Christmas Tree

It's been awhile since we have had a live Christmas tree so this year we decided to forego the fancy, formal Christmas tree and to get a live tree and decorate it with a mismatch of colorful decorations.  So first thing this morning we jumped in the truck and headed up to the cabin where were able to get a Wyoming tree cutting permit and cut ourselves a fresh, live, fir tree.

At the cabin, the boys had fun sledding and playing in the snow.  Jonah came with us so that made the day extra fun.

Then after spending a little time at the cabin we jumped in the truck and drove to a nearby, fir filled area where Dave found us the perfect Christmas tree. :)