Before I do a series of posts about our Christmas, I wanted to interject this quick post about Ellie's birthday! She turned 12 on the 28th. Our usual donut place is often closed from Christmas to New Years, so I tried a new place not too far away. It was good enough, but I did love the cute box the donuts came in!

For lunch, Ellie wanted to make a charcuterie board.

It was a fun, delicious lunch. Even Andy was home because he worked from home all that week.

That night for dinner she requested salmon cakes and french fries, and then we watched her pick, "Home Alone 2." It was a fun day celebrating our favorite 12 year old!

 

Inspired by "The Usual Suspects" movie poster...

With Thanksgiving being early this year, we had an extra week between Thanksgiving and Christmas, which is always delightful! 

As is our usual tradition, we got back from Texas on Saturday night, and then Sunday after church we decorated for Christmas. After we were done with that, we headed to the mall for our annual Christmas shopping trip. No pictures from that this year, but the kids always love our night shopping for each other.

It's always lovely being all ready for Christmas as soon as we get back and enjoying the cozy holiday month.

Inspired by my mom and sister, I now always host at least one, usually two, Christmas brunches for different groups of friends. This year, I hosted my Bible study small group and friends from TCA (Ellie's school).

One of Millie's favorite spots to snooze was right next to our wooden Nativity.

Another annual event for us in December is our church's adult Christmas party. Our church secretary has hosted this party for almost 30 years, but she passed the baton on to the pastor's family this year. We still had our traditional White Elephant gift exchange.

Andy's portrait is one of the gifts that comes back every year for the gift exchange. This year our good friends got it. The husband proudly displayed it in their kitchen/dining area. His wife and daughter are good sports!

December is definitely filled with lots of cookies. It's embarrassing how many batches we make. Now, thanks to Hannah and Ellie, I barely make any. Two of our family favorites are Raspberry Shortbread cookies, and the Hershey Kiss cookies.

Hannah's friend, Hannah, was in a Christmas concert at Emmanuel Faith. We had gone years before and it was excellent, but we had never been back. I'm so glad we made it this year!

It was a "Krause Christmas" this year, so all of my family was going to start coming into town on December 18th. I wanted to have everything done that I could before then. It turned out that I had to be at my in-laws condo for a four-hour window one day so that the fire sprinklers could be inspected. I decided to pack up all of the presents and wrapping stuff and take it all over there to wrap all of the presents. Of course, the people showed up to inspect the sprinklers after I had wrapped only two gifts, but I ended up staying for a few hours anyway to get everything done. It was great, and I was all ready for Christmas before my family came to town...

We haven't had a Google Christmas party since before Covid, so I was pumped to find out that we were having one this year. I don't know if they were making up for the past few years of no parties, but they went ALL OUT this year. 

The theme was "The Greatest Showman," and they encouraged people to dress up in a carnival theme. I busted out this old yarn beard from our dress up box and was a bearded lady. The decorations, food and drinks at the party were all amazing. They said they were just going to serve appetizers, but they also had a street taco bar, a french fry/tater tot bar, mac and cheese, and so many other delicious bites.

One of the best parts was this ridiculously stocked candy room. Our kids would have gone wild. We did bring them home a couple containers of salt water taffy.

A lot of people dressed up carnival style. These two went all out and dressed up as Zendaya and Zac Efron's characters from the movie.

They had this giraffe and a zebra walking around the party all night on stilts. It was pretty cool.

I hadn't seen Andy's friend, Michael, and his wife, Ariel, in a while so it was nice catching up with them.

One of the over-the-top details at the party were these two acrobats that entertained everyone while the band was playing.

I didn't know if I would be bold enough to wear the beard at the party, but I actually wore it all night...

except for one quick picture. 

I think this was my favorite Christmas party of all time!