The Estes Family: Christmas Fun

This month has been filled with Christmas fun! Here are some of the fun things we've been up to as we enjoy the Christmas season.

Mallory has loved to help me wrap and we worked hard one Saturday to get our presents wrapped. I love how her tongue is sticking out - she's just like me in that way - I stick my tongue out when I'm concentrating hard on something.

The week of Thanksgiving, Mallory and Eva went to Nana's and Papa's to help decorate their tree. They both had the best time!

My Sunday School small group helped a widow in our church get her Christmas decorations out and put up her Christmas tree. I love seeing them serving and Mrs. Townsend was so thrilled to have the help! It was a great afternoon!

Mallory has been learning so much about the Christmas story so when I looked over at our Nativity scene, I saw she had put her star wand in. I guess you could say it was for the star that lead the Magi to Jesus. :)

Last weekend, Brian got a gingerbread house kit and he and Mallory went to work on putting it together. This is their Father/Daughter tradition that they both love doing together and I love watching them!

Mallory had to be close at all times to monitor the building of it. Brian takes the building of the house very seriously.

Then it was time to decorate and there was still more serious work going on

I'm not sure if my child is OCD or just excited to learn about patterns but she was made very sure she had the oranges and bananas in the right order on the house

The finished product by these two :)

Last Sunday, we went to our chruch's Christmas program performed by our choir and orchestra. These three friends (and Justin) were happy to be there together to watch it all

Our awesome choir and orchestra

It was a great program and we loved it all!! I love our church and church family dearly!

After the program, we had to take our annual picture in front of the Christmas tree in the Children's building.

On Thursday, Mallory and I made Christmas cookies. She had been asking to do this for a while and we finally had a night home so we got to work.

Once we got the cookies cut out, she was ready to add the sprinkles. We got green, red and pink sprinkles because she just had to have pink. The ones I bought did not have the top that had little holes to sprinkle on so I found an old baby spoon and let Mallory sprinkle them on that way. It worked well!

I love making memories with my little girl!

And soon the cookies were ready for baking. Sprinkles anyone???

Brian and Mallory both said they tasted good so that's a win!

Friday, Mallory had her Christmas party at school. She knew Santa was coming and she told me that she was not going to cry and she was right. My big girl sat with him and she told me she told him that she was getting a barbie dollhouse and My Little Pony toys - which I'm glad she told me because she did not have any My Little Pony presents so I am thankful for Amazon Prime that will deliver a My Little Pony toy before Christmas :)

Saturday night, we continued our Estes Family Tradition of looking at Christmas lights. We stopped for dinner at Cracker Barrel and I loved seeing these two cousins playing Checkers ( or Mallory just moving the checkers around the board)

Once we were all full, it was time to look at the lights. Here we are before heading out.

We found the weirdest house of all in Highland Park. This house has so many Santa's and Big Tex's head on top of their house. I'm not sure why but we declared it the most odd of the night.

We all talked about finding the bears that we found last time we went so we were happy to see them again. These four Estes boys has to pose together for a pic