The Scroggins Family: Christmas Fun

I'm finally getting a chance to put up pictures of some of the things we did this Christmas.Trying to unpack and settle into a new home doesn't go very well with all the festivities and traditions of Christmas, but we did our best to make it fun for the kids and keep up those things that we try to do every year. It just meant not much sleep for Mom and Dad during those crazy weeks!

The kids always love decorating Christmas cookies. This year we got a set of Nativity Cookie Cutters. When it came time to eat a cookie, the kids kept asking for the smallest cookie this year - baby Jesus!

Daddy always makes breakfast fun with creative arrangements for Daddy's Breakfast Days. Here's dreaming of snow!

Some new friends at Harvest invited us to join them at the Brookfield Zoo one evening to see it all lit up. It was beautiful, but it was cold too! Welcome to the Midwest!

I guess Ashlyn must have been feeling the cold in this picture. Not too happy at the moment!

But she did eventually warm up and cheer up!

Stroller races! So fun!

We love to watch White Christmas every year. So here we are enjoying some dessert while we watched the movie amidst lots of boxes.

Ashlyn cracked us up as she jumped up to dance and sing withe the dancers on the movie!

We had a blast checking out downtown Chicago for the first time - ice skating at Millenium Park, window shopping at Macy's and finishing with dinner at Giordano's. We were thankful for a beautiful day and weather that was warm enough that we got hot in our jackets.

Waiting for the skate rentals

We didn't know what to expect from Ashlyn with ice skating. She is typically not very adventurous so we weren't even sure we would get past getting the skates on her feet. But she surprised and actually loved it! She even managed to skate a bit on her own without any help.

Micah skated around the rink like a pro!

When Ashlyn did fall down, she laughed and thought it was funny!

Time for a break while they clean up the ice - hot cocoa and popcorn. Yum!


Ahhh! It looks like he's about to get run over! Micah had fun playing by the big jelly bean!

Overlooking the skating rink

Lots of fun things inside Macy's

Checking out the Macy's Christmas tree

By the time we made it to Giordanno's we were starving! We sure enjoyed that Chicago style pizza!

And Ashlyn enjoyed dessert all over her face! (Thanks to Daddy!)

As we headed to the parking garage we saw these beautiful trees so we stopped to take a few pics.

So sweet when we get to see them love on each other.

Always gotta have a crazy one too!

The kids and I headed out one afternoon to explore our new town. We ended up at a huge mall just about 15 minutes from us. The kids loved the Winter Wonderland in the center of the mall!

Christmas shopping for the boys. We ended up at the Lego store and Ashlyn had fun checking out their computer games while I worked on finding Micah's present.

Time to check out what's on the Advent Calendar for the day. The kids love opening a new box everyday and finding a new piece to put on the nativity scene.

Christmas Eve morning the kids were excited to open one present - something they could wear to the Christmas Eve service at church that night.

Nathan and Micah actually spent most of Christmas Eve at church. Harvest had several Christmas Eve services, in lieu of having any service on Christmas morning. Micah was thrilled to help Daddy at work and he made some new buddies with several people that Nathan works with. He was a great helper!

Ashlyn and I showed up near the end of the day. After the service we headed to the Cornerstone Cafe for some hot cocoa by the fire.

Cheers!

Crazy picture first!

Now for a nice sweet Christmas photo

Ashlyn was fascinated with the nativity scene in the Children's ministry area. She had seen it up for several weeks, but when she walked by and saw a baby doll laying in the manger, she couldn't resist becoming part of the scene. The set her out on her role play for the next week - She was Mary and Micah was Joseph, and the baby Jesus was one of her baby dolls.