Last Christmas Crafts of 2014

I have a new phone, and couldn't seem to make the computer recognize it so I could get my pictures off the phone.  Jess got it for me today.  So....I'm behind.  The last 3 days of Christmas crafts before Christmas Eve arrived:

Day 21:  We doubled up on Christmas activities.  Chris was sick, but Sarah and the kids came over with a cute craft for everyone.  Foam gingerbread houses.  These were nice because Paige can rarely do the gingerbread house kits because they always seem to be made in a factory with peanuts.  I always plan to make some from scratch, but I failed again this year.  Anyway they liked these foam and sticker versions.  :)

 I forgot to take pictures while they were still here so I only have finished products for our kids. 

Paige:

 Cason:

 Neely:

 Reed loved Amelia:

 

 Sarah let him "hold" her.  :)

 A while later, we had lunch, and headed to Connie's to decorate cookies.  

 

 They loved it, and her cookies.

 

 Reed loved Sebastian's bed.  

 He even went around in circles before lying down in it.  Haha!

 Day 22:
Angel ornaments.  The kids liked this one.  They liked painting, and getting to choose what color hair their angel had.  :)

 

 

 Day 23:

Connie had showed me this-

 

 I had some forest green polymer clay, so we made our own version of this with all our thumbprints.  I realize now that I forgot to take a picture of ours before packing it up with the Christmas stuff.  Oh well, it exists.

This was our last craft for the season, since in our family Christmas festivities start on Christmas Eve.  :)

Pictures

A few weeks before Christmas we got our kids and their Austin cousins together so I could try and get pictures of all of them for Grammy and Grampy for Christmas.  I am no photographer, and SURE don't know how to edit, so we were trying to get all 6 kids looking at the camera and smiling.  Never quite got them all smiling, but came close enough to do the job.  Ha. 

 

Then I took some of just the Austins and just the Jacobs kids while we were at it.

 

 Some other random combos:

 

I don't know if this is typical or if our girls are just weirdos but those four year olds are impossible to get pics of.  Their eyes wander, and it's so hard to get natural smiles when they know a camera is involved.

 Anyway, then we tried for some individual ones, which was pretty tough because they had lost interest in the taking of pictures long ago.  Still got some cute pictures I'm glad to have though.

 

 

 

 

Christmas Crafts Days 16-20

 Day 16:

We went over to the Cassons' house for a playdate and the little kids made suncatchers with those melty beads, with a bit of help from their moms.

Neely's is the ornament, Liam's is the Santa, Colin's is the snowman. 

Reed wandered around, stealing ornaments off their tree and smiling at Amelia.

He gives her the cutest smiles, you can tell he feels big. 

While their suncatchers were in the oven, they had some pizza and watched Frosty the Snowman.

Sarah sent suncatchers home for the big kids to do that afternoon.  It ended up being a rough afternoon for us, lots of frustration and fighting, and they kept getting their suncatchers ready, only to have me ruin them when I tried to put them in the oven.  (My dumb oven rack seems to be a little bent or something).  

We eventually gave up and they colored the 3-D Christmas trees(also from Sarah)

 

 

 During the fighting, Paige told me "Maybe doing a craft every day isn't a good idea."  Ha.  Sooooo we decided to do some simple crafts for a few days. 

On the 17th we nearly forgot to do one-and close to bedtime I looked up an idea for a quick, easy one.  We settled on thumbprint Christmas lights.  

 

 

 

 On the 18th, Veronica had us over and they each picked a craft to make.  I think Paige and Lily are the only ones who picked anything Christmas related, but I'll count us eating Veronica's chocolate peppermint cookies as a Christmas activity.  Ha!

 

 From left-right, Cason's panda, Lily's polar bear in a hat, Paige's elf and penguin

 Neely made a "cat".  Ha!

Reed went through their art stuff.

On the 19th, we did popsicle stick reindeer.  Paige got mad at me again and didn't finish hers.  Ha.

On the 20th, I set up a sleepover for them with Grampa and Grama Trudi, so that Jess and I could take just Reed and finish our shopping, and wrap gifts without them there to peek.  So we did another quick one that day, before seeing them off on their sleepover.

Thumbprint candy canes.

This isn't one of our official crafts, but on Monday Sarah came by to drop something off and while they were here Colin asked her to draw for him.  Neely was inspired by Sarah's picture and drew this one.  I think it's so cute.  I love how she drew the antlers, and how Santa is hanging upside down on his way up the side of the house.