December incidentals

Before I force my short attention span to focus long enough to click through dozens and dozens of pictures of legos being unwrapped (aka the Christmas pictures), here's everything else random from the month of December that hasn't already been preserved for posterity:

Ahhh, little bundled boys are so cute! Although I am for sure counting down the days until t-shirts, shorts, and crocs (do you know how much time that will save us in the morning? They might even be on time to school then!).

December was, as usual, a crazy, wonderful month. I'm cheesy and I love the happy, giving spirit that is in the air - I always walk into Walmart expecting to make friends with fellow shoppers, and in December it seems like everyone goes along with it more, haha. This year brought a big project to tackle: our church Christmas party! Our committee was asked to do food and decorations... yikes. I'm pretty sure Emily and I put blood, sweat, and tears into all the planning and executing:

We had sign-ups for people to make 'festive' potatoes and brownies, but we were in charge of buying and distributing all the ingredients to those fine volunteers. OH my goodness, that was intense. I want to say Em and I went to five stores that day... and then spent a decent amount of time divying up the ingredients and dropping them off. I'm so glad that Emily and I love each other so much, because we definitely got lots of bonding time in! [Also, her kids were superstars! I happily left mine home with Chuck that day]

The set-up and decorating happened the morning of the party, and actually went really smoothly. Then we met up a bit before the party to start getting food ready to serve.

I was in the kitchen the whole night (serious thanks to my mom for coming to wrangle the boys and Chuck for getting off work early so he could come and help me out - he was one of the meat servers) but here are a couple pictures I took of the crowd. Attendance was great, and the program was fabulous - various musical presentations and a fun video of ward members answering questions about Christmas. My favorite part was in response to "What would you give Jesus for Christmas?" - Will answered (in kind of a slow, patient tone) "Uhh, nothing. He doesn't live on this earth..." Haha, that's my literal kid!! (Clyde answered that question with "Uhh, clothes" - that's the kid of a Savers shopper!!)

We donned some pretty sweet holidays ensembles for the party (I wish I had gotten a picture of Chuck in his 'festive' holiday striped sweater...) and Jack let us know exactly what he thought of Santa Claus :).

The party was definitely worth it; I think everyone had fun and we bonded as a ward... particularly those of us in the kitchen who laughed and cried as we boxed up leftovers and marveled at the wide variety of brownies that came in :).

My other slightly time-consuming project of the month was making Jack a special pillowcase with his name on it to go with the toddler bed that Santa (that savvy craigslist shopper!) was hefting down our (non-existent) chimney for him.

As with anything crafty I embark on, it took loads longer and came out loads wonkier than expected, but that's okay! I'm slightly addicted to fabric (most of my stash has been stolen from my mom as we pared her stash down...) and so it's fun to use some of it, thereby justifying its existence in an almost overflowing tote in the playroom closet!

I made sure to sneak out for some fun in December, including a high school orchestra concert featuring my good buddy Will:

He's the cute boy (partially blocked by his music stand) playing the violin in the middle of the picture. Will is a superstar musician - his piano playing is incredible - and I loved hanging out with his mom Joy while we enjoyed the concert together!

We also had our monthly girls' night, wooo!

 Have I mentioned these nights restore my sanity? Because they do :).

 And finally, the boys had a fun last day of school before the holiday break and I got to hang out for most of it.

Clyde's class kicked off the day with a breakfast/Rudolph party. I grabbed a chair and sat in the back with Clyde to watch the movie and some of his cute little friends.

Next up was their school sing-a-long in the gym (Chuck and Jack joined me for this part). It was cute, although not terribly exciting since the parents sit behind the kids and get to admire the backs of their little heads :). But it was nice to hear the complete songs that we'd been treated to snippets of at home, haha.

 Grandpa Pam rolled in right then, just in time for lunch and to come to Will's classroom party! Oh, and the picture on the bottom right is the boys with Ms. Emily, one of the awesome ladies in the front office who calls me whenever Clyde needs me at school (some weeks I talk to her more than to Chuck...) and who also smiles at us every. single. day. when the boys walk in late to school and doesn't judge us. Love her and Ms. Elsie - they both got Christmas presents from the Izatt boys!!

Will's party was decorating little gingerbread boys and girls and watching the Grinch. Please note that Will's cookie has a chocolate chip belly button :).

 I love how tightly Will is clutching his card for Mrs. Keene - and how when she opened it, he explained that the gift card inside meant she could "buy anything she wanted at Target!" 

And that was the rest of December... minus Christmas, of course. Stay tuned for that riveting account of a day opening legos, playing legos, me napping, more legos, eating, legos, napping, etc. It was fabulous.