It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

The month of December started with our ward Christmas party! I'm glad that was done with before the rest of our holiday festivities took off...it definitely kept us busy!! Working with our Activities Committee and Coordinator we pulled off a fantastic party! My parents were a huge help as well! Our "Night in Bethlehem " was complete with a Bethlehem marketplace, a city-well, the nativity play, a delicious spread of Mediterranean food, a tax to collect can foods for a local organization here in Seattle, and of course Santa Clause (not part of Bethlehem but a favorite ward tradition). Thank you to everyone who helped pull this off! 

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So, for part of our decorations, and as a major prop for our nativity play Cameron (yes, I know he is fabulous!) created a stable for us to use. I hunted Craig's list for free wood and this is what he put together. Amazing! huh!? I love that man! 

Family photo-op! Including Mr Zebra!

Laila's supporting my first Christmas dress. 

The Dances took us to see a Christmas Carol downtown. It was such a fun way, in such an awesome spirit, to start our Christmas season. It was preformed in a small circle theater which really made it come to life. We have been so blessed to have the Dance's in our lives. You know, Cam and I talk about it a lot. I remember when we first came up to Seattle to look at apartments. I remember seeing the apartment building, where we live now, and thinking, alright, that looks promising. It looks nice and comfortable, nice neighborhood. Doesn't look terrible expensive (believe me, I know some of you Utah-folk think we pay a lot for rent, which we do, but it could be SOOO much more. Welcome to downtown city life! Yikes! )  but it didn't look so cheap that we would maybe die from black mold poisoning. Unfortunately the managers were not on sight so we couldn't get in to look at the apartments. But we both felt so good about it, so we went for it. Looking back now, we both feel that part of the reason we are here has been to have the Dance's touch our lives. We are SO blessed to call them friends!!! Anyway, enough of that sappy stuff. ;-)

We had to have a gingerbread (well, graham cracker) house contest! :) We had some friends over for dinner and had a whole spread of ginger-bread making equipment. 

So after our pitty little homemade ginger-bread houses, these look INCREDIBLE! yep that's right! that ship is made out of ginger-bread and candy! We ventured downtown to check out all these beauties with both the Dances and Mom and Dad Alberts. 

Here is Laila's picture with Santa from our Ward Christmas party. As you can tell, they instantly became best friends!!! In time, in time. :)

*** I have NO idea what's going on with blogger, but it can't seem to figure out how to turn my pictures the correct way. And of course, electronics is to blame...not me.