Menzie Clan Adventures!: Happy Birthday, Jesus!

Christmas this year was wonderful. Mom and Dad flew in on the 20th and stayed until the 29th. It was very low key around here and I enjoyed more than ever. I want to make sure that the kids understand why we celebrate Christmas. I want them to enjoy all the baking, making cards and crafts, decorating our annual gingerbread house and going to church. I want them to remember Christmas being a time of celebration with family, not running around stressed out about finding gifts for everyone. I want them to have fond memories of Christmas like I do and I think this year we started accomplishing all those things!
This year we had a new friend visiting us for the Christmas season and his name was Sherman. Sherman is our elf on the shelf. The kids loved waking up and looking for him in the mornings, except of course when he had to stay at the north pole for those 2 weeks because of bad behavior in the Menzie house. Sherman was a very naughty elf sometimes as we would come in from picking up Owen from school and he would have moved from his morning spot. We caught him eating cookies, playing with Ian's birthday balloon, wrapping presents and making a snow angel on the stove! I loved watching the kids every morning run around the house to see who could find Sherman first! I look forward to the upcoming years when Sherman visits us and we find him up to no good!
We took mom and dad to Breckenridge this year since it would be our last opportunity. They did not have as much snow as I would have liked them to see, but we had a fun day nonetheless. We took dad on the big sledding hill in Carter Park and let's just say dad is not a professional sledder :) We ate lunch at our favorite restaurant, Downstairs at Eric's, and then went ice skating. Well, the 31 and under crowd went ice skating :)
It was sad thinking this was our last Christmas in Colorado Springs but it was exciting to think it was our last year for a while to buy presents online and have them shipped to family members!!
Enjoy the pictures from Christmas! I also included some from New Year's Eve!