Santa!!!

On December 10th Lamiaa and Seema were going to do some shopping in Sugarhouse.  As I was dropping them off the Santa in the Santa shack was not busy so we stopped on in to say hello...

They told Santa they were going to California and that was a good gift.  He said he would bring them a surprise.  Can't wait to see that!! We have been good - so of course we would get a surprise.

Keep on counting to Christmas!!!

Miss Scarlet with a rope in the kitchen!!!

CLUE!!!

We loved being invited again to the Mackenzie / Loughridge house for dinner.  They are so much fun and Chip's salmon is perfect every time!

After dinner we played Clue.  Of course, Seema had never played and Chip was amazing at explaining all the rules and how you have to ask for clues from the other players and how sometimes players ask questions they already know the answers in order to narrow down the results.  He was really into it - really into it!!!!

Seema and Lizzie were really concentrating as well.

Guess who won????

Seema won!!!

Getting ready for the big guy in red....Santa!!!

First - in case Santa is reading, we have been good, very very good so please don't forget about us.

After surviving and laughing over our Thanksgiving we immediately started getting ready for Christmas.  There is a lot to be done - or I should say a lot of fun activities I want to do to celebrate.  The weekend before Thanksgiving I got our house decorated and mostly ready. Seema thought I has lost my mind, a thought she continues to have I am certain on a regular basis, but I knew what all was in our future. 

Of course we bought a chocolate advent calendar and Seema has promised to only eat ONE candy each day - I can't verify this, but I am pretty confident that she is sticking with the one a day.

We started off the first weekend of December with a trip to the Festival of Trees.  This annual event is a fundraiser for Primary Childrens Hospital where people donate a decorated tree, wreath, quilt, table top decor or gingerbread house and local companies and individuals purchase the trees etc.  Many trees are made in honor/memory of a loved one that died.  I am guessing there were 400+ trees along with holiday performances at the event.

We were excited to have Uncles Alex & Joe and Rebecca to go with us.  We started the night with scones, cinnamon buns and chocolate milk and then looked at all the trees.  AND GUESS WHAT - yup, we found a tree decorated with national flags... Paksitan and Morocco were both very prominate on the tree and Seema could not have smiled any bigger.

It would not be Utah without Quilts.  We love the crafts!!!

Look closely and you will see that the tree has HONEY BEES on it!!!

The next day we grabbed Lamiaa and headed over to Larson pad.  For years Gina, her mom Myra and I have made popcorn balls and a couple years ago we added pretzel dipping.  We also added Alex & Joe for the pretzels portion.  This year we dipped about 550 pretzels and made two batches of popcorn balls. 

I know they look tired, but at this photo we were only about 1/2 done.  Yes Lamiaa is wearing reindeer antlers and Seema is sporting a tree headband.  Dang, they are good sports!

 Ririe, our official bagger. 

I am pretty certain he counted to 4 (4 pretzel per bag) about 100+ times.  He is an amazing worker and sticks with a project!

We have lots of pretzels gifts ready to roll.  And the gift tags the girls made at craft day added the perfect touch. Be sure to click on the craft day link to read all about what we made!!!