The Norris Gang: Most Wonderful Time

December 1st, the Calendars go up! It takes a lot of planning and preparation for these but it makes the Holiday season even more exciting for all of us!

Chance's calendar is ready to go! He also gives me daily envelopes with special surprises. It's so fun when we all take the time to make each other feel special! Forget Anniversaries Chance and I get romantic around the Holidays! Ha ha!

The boys are so happy when their calendar goes up too!

This is definitely a favorite activity we all look forward to! Dinner and game night with the Jensen's! It's a bit of a challenge getting everyone a seat around the table, but we make it work!

Dessert time!

As usual, I provide dinner and Randi provides the games! She always has such fun activities for the kids! Pin the nose on the snowman:

Building a snowman race!

So hilarious! Luke and Nate's favorite part was busting out of it at the end!

"Hot Santa"

And our game night would not be complete without a snowball fight!

I try to throw in some new ideas to the calendar each year so this year I thought we would try out the Santa Train in North Bend. This was the boys first time on a train so they were excited! Here they are waiting at the train station!

It even started snowing while we were waiting in line to load the train! It made it feel all the more magical!

The ride was a bit cold and unfortunately a little stressful for Luke. There was an older girl with special needs who kept yelling loudly at random times. Luke is very sensitive to "surprising things" so was having trouble relaxing for the whole ride!

Once we arrived we had to wait in a very long ride to meet Santa. Can you believe this is their first picture with Santa? Ha ha! Shows how much Mom cares about the whole Santa thing!

After they met Santa, there wasn't much else for the kids to do while we waited for the next train to pick us up. There was a place to get cookies and hot cocoa, but it was pretty cold every where we went. The cookies were hard as rock and the hot cocoa was literally scalding! Little strange for an activity designed for kids if you ask me! There was little shop to look around with some toys and then we just sort of walked around the nearby area. Finally it was time to get back on the train. However this time it was dark outside so there wasn't much light in the train!

Oh and then the train stopped and the power went out! The train started moving again but it was lights out for the rest of the ride! It was an interesting adventure, but I don't think the "Santa Train" will be making it onto next year's calendar!

I like to do a Scavenger Hunt every year for the boys. It's always fun to get a little early Christmas gift! And every year the boys get better at reading the clues. Of course the clues get a little harder each year too!

I sort of look forward to the "Christmas Music Dance Party." It usually starts really fun and either ends in someone getting hurt or I just end it for fear of someone getting hurt! Either way, it's a bit stressful because the "dancing" evolves quickly into wrestling/rough housing.

But it does provide some hilarious and adorable entertainment watching these boys come up with new moves!

Luckily, no one got hurt this year and we all came away with smiles!

Another favorite of the boys is decorating ice cream cones like Christmas trees. I think they claim to enjoy the activity really for the eating candy while they are decorating part of it!