Christmassy weekend

'Twas 2 weekends before Christmas and parties were planned, come one come all they say, no one will be banned . . .

On Saturday the 13th, the kids and I loaded up the car to head north to Plain City where we attended the Binggeli Family Christmas Party.  James' Aunt Joyce was actually the party planner, but it was hosted by Aunt Suzanne in her large garage.  Suzanne has a small farm in Plain City with some horses and a dog.  The party was Mexican Fiesta Christmas themed and even included a tractor strung pinata for the kids to beat down.

Jack enjoyed the Doritos.

The only LaRon Binggeli's who were able to come are mostly in this picture - Mary, LaRon, Jason (and roommate Glen), Haley, Molly, and Jack.  

The kids love Uncle Jason and he is a great distraction for them.  Sometimes at family gatherings I feel like I should be paying him babysitting fees.

Molly and Jack played with a nativity set between many other party games.  You can see "pin the beard on Santa" taped to the door and I think, "balance the ornaments on the wrapping paper tubes" was going on to the  right of the photo.

We loaded back into the car.  The kids both fell asleep and I stressfully listened to Utah play Kansas on the radio.  They were down by 21 after halftime and came back to lead, then tie, they lose by a few at the end.  It was a crazy, but totally good effort ball game.

We were only home for a couple of hours before we went to the next party - the Ward Christmas Party.  I don't know that we would have gone (especially without James), but we did because I was asked to play the piano for the primary's short musical number.  Molly sang her guts out and Jack got to sit on the piano bench with me.  I made him promise before that he cwould not play on the piano while I was.  He said he'd be good, but of course, it was too tempting and at one (only one) point in the song, he reached his little ET finger up and played a wrong note.  I told him no, but he just giggled at me.

This boy is Jaylen.  He is in our primary class and is a little bit of a stinker.  We always seem to be mad at him or we are bribing him with candy to be good.  He must not dislike us that much because he made a special trip over to say hi to us at the ward party.

Jack took this picture of Molly.

Molly took this picture of me.

Jack found his twin at the ward party.  This boy is Easton and they usually get a pretty good game of catch going in the nursery on Sundays.

On Sunday morning we headed in town to the Tabernacle Choir Christmas Program with special guest Santino Fontana (Prince Hans) and the Sesame Street Muppets (Bert, Ernie, Big Bird, Elmo, etc.)  The Church dropped the age limit in order to allow kids to come see the program.  We thought Molly would like it, but she got bored and was a bit of a stinker.  In her defense, the program was pretty long and we were high up in the balcony where she really didn't understand what we were doing other than just watching a program on TV.  Oh well.  Maybe we will go again sometime.  

We just happened to luck out and get tickets this year.  We had 4 and hadn't put much thought into what to do with the 4th ticket until we found at that my sister's in-laws had given her 4 that they weren't going to use.  My sister was also only going to use 3 of hers, so my dad went and sat with her and my mom went and sat with us.  It was good.