the brower hour: Christmas 2020

the month of December was busy living life to the fullest!

from cookie baking and decorating, to delivering breakfast to the nurses on Christmas morning, we made the month of December one to remember doing simple things that brought us joy! here are a few photos to help us remember all the fun!

(plus a few extra photos that blogger isn't letting me move around right now, so we get a few bonus pics too)

Owen lost his 4th tooth... that makes 4 missing teeth right smack dab in the front of his smile.

chris built a workbench in a corner of the basement. it was a fun project for him and its already been put to good use.

jack made Owen a bow for Christmas. he had several failed attempts but his finished one is pretty special!

our ward put together a drive thru Christas party on Sunday, Dec 20th. each organization handed out a little goodie. chris and the elders quorum handed out a bottle of sparkling cider to each car. one of my counselors and I put together these little wreaths made with cuties. they were adorable, but took foreverrrrr to make. in fact, I took Ellie to the church to help me finish them up because they took so much longer than we had anticipated. but the boys brought us pizza and then everyone played some basketball in the gym and it ended up being a fun Friday night for our family.

we made a couple different batches of cookies, of course. one was a chocolate peppermint crinkle cookie and they were divine.

we've had a few different snowfalls this winter!

gotta love those little gifts made by kindergartners!

we picked up an old piano from a Facebook selling wall and it needed some serious TLC.

the guy that came to tune it was a master at his trade and did a great job. turns out this old Kimball was built in the early to mid 1940's! its definitely not perfect, but its better than a keyboard for Jack, Ellie, and Charlie's lessons.

we decided to scrap gingerbread houses this year and made sugar cookie houses instead! chris picked up a few 24 hr OB shifts for a coworker whose mother passed away, so we made him a house and took it to him along with dinner.

my favorite way to decorate sugar cookie houses is with plain buttercream!

the kids on the other hand went all out with the candy decorations.

grandma Browne sent us a fun game that she played as a kid with her family called Skittles. she played it with her siblings once while visiting the Wilkinson Center at BYU and they had so much fun, that grandma Donna bought one for their living room. Grandma Linda has so many fond memories of playing skittles so she sent one to each of her kids this Christmas. and its been fun! we are keeping track of the highest scores on the back of the board and so far jack is holding our record.

Christmas Eve was a difficult day for me.

I think it was a combination of holiday and birthday preparations, plus all of the expectations I feel coming to a climax, plus chris being the late guy on Christmas Eve, plus all of my food preparations failing (im looking at you, Yule log hahaha!), plus hormones. all those things aren't necessarily uncommon, but for some reason I struggled to deal with them on Christmas Eve and I couldn't keep it together. it made for a challenging day for me and I know it made it a sad day for the kids too. after having a good cry and time out, I was able to jump back in to the festivities and I hope the kids are able to forget those moments when im not on my A game, cause they certainly happen.

after a yummy dinner of grilled burgers we let the kids open the gifts they either bought or made for one another. it was very sweet to see their excitement and anticipation as their sibling was opening the gift they were giving.

we had jack read The Night Before Christmas (which we had the funniest moment EVER with. Jack got to the part about Santa, with all his descriptions. not sure if it's cause he was reading fast or what, but instead of reading "His eyes- how they twinkled, His dimples: how merry!" he accidentally said "His eyes- how they twinkled, his nipples: how merry!" we laughed and laughed at that and had a hard time coming back to the story after that).

then we watched The Christ Child and talked abut how Christ's Atonement is why we celebrate His birth. without that, we wouldn't have any reason to celebrate his birth and life on earth.

then we ate the Yule log that caused me so much frustration earlier in the day (because of an eggy and rubbery sponge, which resulted in a second cake being baked because the filling and frosting were already made earlier that day).

the kids then went to bed (ha!) while chris and I made all of our breakfast prep.

one of the best things I did this December was pay Ellie to wrap all the gifts. I hate wrapping gifts and they usually get left until Christmas Eve. chris and I stay up watching James Bond movies while we wrap (which means I wrap 300 gifts and chris wraps a couple because he can't watch and wrap at the same time). I hate it! so this year, when Ellie asked if she could earn some money to buy a gift for each boy, I said "YES! wrap all the gifts!". best $15 I've ever spent.

Christmas morning we woke up to our first

WHITE CHRISTMAS!

nothing worse than mom making the kids wait for a picture before they get to go find their stockings on Christmas morning!

we did things a little different this year and I hope we continue doing it this way forever. after stockings, we paused everything. we doubled our traditional sticky buns and tater tot breakfast casserole and delivered some to chris' coworkers who were working and away from their families on Christmas morning. then we came home and ate our breakfast feast before continuing our present opening. it was a great way to make the magic of Christmas morning last a little longer.

both Charlie and Owen asked for their favorite chips, weirdos!

chuck loves cheddar and sour cream ruffles and Ellie loves Takis Fuego.

Ellie wrapped up her old magic set for Owen because he is always sneaking into her room and trying to learn magic tricks. it made his day!

all jack wanted were lures and a pellet gun.

Charlie wanted legos and nunchucks.

Ellie wanted white high top converse and a new sweatshirt. (she also got a phone. heaven help us! its actually a Gabb phone, which doesnt have internet, so no games or social media. just talk, text, camera, calendar and calculator).

Owen wanted a red gaiter, a recorder, and a slinky

Marc and DeLauna came over in the afternoon for spaghetti dinner! the Brower family tradition is to have this meal on Christmas Eve, but because we didn't know when chris would be home, we did it on Christmas Day.

DeLauna had the kids help her make fresh noodles.

OH.MY.GOODNESS.

so incredible!

we had traditional tomato sauce with meatballs, browned butter and mazithra cheese, and a cheesy pepper sauce, plus sausages, salad, garlic bread, not to mention the artichoke dip and the armadillo eggs for appetizers or the raspberry white chocolate truffle cheesecake for dessert. it was heavenly and we were all in pain afterwards hahaha.