December FHEs

This year we borrowed an idea from Willie and Krista (thanks guys!) for our December Family Home Evenings.  We took the opportunity to talk about different characters from the Christmas Nativity each Monday in hopes of teaching Tori and Garrett the real reason why we celebrate Christmas.  I think that it also helped Jared and me to stay focused on Jesus Christ during all the crazy holiday hecticness as well!
For our first Monday we talked about the shepherds.  Jared even dressed up as a shepherd as we read about them in the scriptures and played with the kids' nativity set.  Our second Monday we talked about the Wise Men and how they brought gifts to the Baby Jesus.  For this one we made cookies and fudge and delivered them to some of our neighbors.  We had such a great night!  Sadly, I forgot to take pictures for our first two FHEs.
For our third Monday we invited a few families that we Home Teach,Visit Teach, or are far away from family over to our house for one of my favorite Harrison Christmas traditions!  We had each family bring a Christmas story and a treat to share.  Then we took turns reading our stories.  Jared proved to be an excellent upside down reader!

I love how most of the kids are totally entertained!  And then if you notice Tori and her friend Lilly in the back- they are giving each other a big hug!

We even had some fun interactive books!

Owen and Garrett had a great time playing with each other!

And that brings us to FHE number four- Christmas Eve.  Tonight we all dressed up and acted out the Christmas story.

Tori looked so adorable! (And you can totally tell we had red juice with our dinner!)

And here are my two shepherd boys!  Although, Tori kept saying Garrett was a sheep!

Our nativity family picture!!!

Our little Mary did a great job riding the donkey to Bethlehem!

It was so fun as we were acting out the rest of the story to realize that Tori was telling it all by herself!  We had a wonderful evening remembering our Savior's birth and all that He has done for us!
To wrap up our evening, we all got to open our new Christmas pajamas!  Garrett is finally figuring out this opening present thing!

Jared got me some awesome Wonder Woman jammies!  (So did not remember how scantily clad she was!)

Jared was super excited about his new lounge attire!

Tori loved her butterfly jammies!

Garrett looked so cute in his monster jammies!

Now we are all ready for Christmas to come!!!