The Noriega Family

Our favorite Christmas tradition is having Grandma come and stay with us for a week.  We love sharing our Christmas fun with her.  She helped us make goodies and we played lots of games with her.  She read lots of Christmas stories to the girls.  And she went with us to the Bethlehem walk.  

We had more time during the day because this is the first year all the kids are in school.  We went to a couple daytime movies and we watched two plays in the evening.  We saw, Beautiful; the Carole King Story.  It was fantastic! and we saw, Elf, the Musical.  

It was so much fun having Grandma here.  I just love December!

We have the Christmas Spirit in our house.  We started our Christmas countdown calendar.  The girls love it; they cannot wait to find out what the day's fun activity will be.  The enjoy the chocolate in the calendar too.  We decorated the house, went to the Christmas craft fair, did crafts at the house, made and delivered Christmas goodies to our neighbors, colored Christmas pictures, went the train display at the US Botanical gardens, watched Christmas movies, did a Christmas puzzle, went to the ward Christmas party, went shopping for sister gifts...and we have listened to lots of Christmas music.  

Sienna never has any ideas to tell Santa about what she wants for Christmas.  She just says she doesn't care what she gets.  The girls had fun with the snowball fight at the party as well. 

The best part of Christmas this year has been our elf, Krystale.  She has been getting into all kinds of shenanigans.  Sienna's toy soldiers captured her the the other night...the girls thought that was pretty funny.  

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  We Spent a few days at Grandma and Grandpa's house.  It was so fun to be with family and enjoy eating and relaxing together.  Anthrea did a great craft with the kids that they enjoyed for several hours.  She has lots of great paper crafting stuff and they made smash books.  Loads of fun.  The kids played in the leafs...it was freezing outside, but they did not seem to mind.  

We did some shopping on Friday...Just the ladies.  The kids and the men set up Grandma's tree and we all played lots of games and just enjoyed family time.  The girls watched all three Home Alone movies.  They loved them!

Hector was out of town for the weekend, so us girls had a fun girl weekend.  Sienna had her girl scouts ropes course.  She really enjoyed it, even though it was really cold.  

I also took the girls to see a play at the local high school.  We saw Peter and the Star-catcher.  The girls loved it and have not stopped talking about the play.  They love play (just like their mom) and cannot wait to go to another performance sometime.  Two girls from my Young Women's group were in the play, so that made it extra fun.  

Hector discovered a couple years ago that he is into hunting.  It has become his new hobby and Sienna has become fascinated with it as well.  Hector took Sienna hunting with him for the first time.  Sienna was so excited and talked about it all week long; she even got to miss a day of school.  She was very cute as she anticipated.  Hector got her a tree stand and they spend the weekend freezing in a tree, not seeing any deer.  Sienna loved it!

They practiced setting up the tree stands in our yard and all the girls got to try them out.