December happenings!

Christmas time brings one of my favorite traditions! 

Christmas cards! 

I absolutely love receiving cards at Christmas time!

the past couple years I've tried really hard to have our cards in the mail sometime during the first week of December so it is out of the way.

the first Saturday of December is the annual Granville Candlight Tour in our village. all the businesses, restaurants, churches and museums on our main road open up with live music and special treats. there are horse drawn carriages giving free rides and Christmas trees line the streets. its pretty magical!

unfortunately this year it was raining. but he still went out for about an hour to check things out. we listened to a bluegrass band that played in front of the vault at the local bank, checked out the toy trains displayed all throughout our library, and visited a few other museums and homes before getting some hot cocoa, an apple fritter, and some Mexican street corn.

the elementary school kids get to make ceramic ornaments in art class and then each class gets to decorate one of the trees lining the sidewalks downtown. Charlie's tree is right in front of our post office this year.

hopefully next year the weather will be a little more pleasant.

for activity days last week the girls acted out the nativity and then they each made a little nativity for their room. it was a fun night.

Owen and I made a bunch of gingerbread for a competition at the ward Christmas party. he cut out all the stars and random shapes and I cut out the house.

then the big kids helped with the rest:

frosting, stacking, sprinkling

our house came in 2nd place!

the primary kids sang some sweet songs and then jack and the youth sang a beautiful song about the Savior that brought tears to my eyes. its truly the most wonderful time of the year (besides the cold weather, ha!).

after the party we went to Zanesville, which is about a 30 min drive, for a baptism at 8pm. I was able to go with the sisters to teach the lady being baptized and was so excited to see her make that change in her life. she is an amazing girl! technically she is in our ward boundaries, but she lives closer to the Zanesville building and is dating a guy in the Zanesville ward, so that's where she was given permission to attend and be baptized. 

the whole point of this story is that while at the baptism, we bumped into Alli and Jacob's nephew, Elder Dooley, who is serving a mission currently in the Zanesville ward. 

small world!!!

our kids thought it was pretty cool to meet someone else that is a cousin to Louie and Olive! hopefully he will be able to serve in our area at some point. we really love Dave and Dani, his parents. they stayed with us during Alli and Jacob's wedding and we really enjoyed getting to know them. that Call family is a special one and im so glad Alli gets to be apart of it!

last night I went to a cookie swap with some friends from church. Owen helped me make a bunch of cookies all day long!

on Monday night we wanted to Light The World in our community so for family night we went to bob Evans for dessert. while there we quietly picked out a little family that was eating and secretly paid for their dinner, to pay it forward for the kind people that did that for us last month. afterwards we went home and jack gave a sweet lesson on forgiveness. 

it was a good night! 

although if i'm being totally honest, Chris and I both regretted that piece of pie. no bueno, bob Evans. no bueno.