In my Christmas decor, I had some cookie cutters/stamps. Henlie found them and thought we should make cookies, so we did on Sunday, December 13th. Church was a 1pm, so we made them before church. We used Pillsbury dough...and I had to add SO much flour in order to actually roll it out and cut it. Also, because the stamp cutters were so shallow, they got a little overbaked, but they were still yummy. Besides, the important part was making the cookies and decorating them with Henlie, which we totally did :)

When we got home from church, we discovered we'd lost a plate to (most likely) the dog. Stinker. The rest we took to Grandma's house to share. They went pretty quickly after that :)

Bonus - we also had popcorn at Grandma's house :)

Saturday, December 12th, we had the Christiansen Christmas party. The tradition goes food and then presents. This year was no different :) That being the case, I'll let the pictures do the talking :)

On December 11th, we met up with Jason and Camile to go to ZooLights! at Hogle Zoo. We were running behind our planned schedule, so they'd done probably at least half the zoo before we got there, but they went back through everything to hang with us. Henlie was super excited to see her best friend Charlie. She misses Charlie since they've moved to Layton.  It was cold and wet, and due to the cold, wet, dark, late nature of the outing, we didn't see many actual animals. If we did, they were sleeping haha. But we had a fun time wandering through, looking at the lights.

I'm officially old. I mean, even at 29, one can say they are in their 20s. Which is like the beginning of being an adult (read: young). But 30? Ugh. I'm like, middle-aged. (Okay, I know this is not true, but when I take a second to think about this new decade, these are the things I think.)

Truthfully, I think this was one of the most (if not the most) low-key birthday I've had. It fell on a Saturday, which was nice because Matt was home. Matt made pancakes for breakfast. Matt and Henlie sang Happy Birthday to me. Henlie's rendition went, "Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you." Later in the day, we went grocery shopping. haha Then, I'd found a Christmas tree farm in West Mountain, so we headed out there to look at trees. We picked one, and they delivered it a few hours later. We let Henlie go play at Grandma's house. (Read: She was driving me crazy and Grandma had offered to watch her.) Matt took me to Sip-N and I tried out their hot cocoa (would purchase again...and I am a bit of a cocoa snob) and fries. Matt had a yummy tangerine smoothie and a peanut butter bar. 

We got home as our tree was arriving, so we got that in the house, got out our brand new live tree stand we just bought at the store, and set our tree up. Turns out it has too skinny of a trunk and we needed to shim it haha. It is mostly straight now :) We hung out for a bit. Found a ladybug in the tree. Well, Munchkin found it when it was out of the tree. I checked on it on the floor and was pleased to discover it was only a ladybug. 

I decided I wanted to start making a sort of seasonal bucket list, fun things (either recurring or one-timers) to do during each season. What better time to start than Christmastime? Carrie gave us an advent calendar a little while back, and so we finally used it this year. First on our list was the Mapleton Christmas Market. 

The Christmas market was the first weekend in December. The 4th was also Mapleton's Christmas lighting ceremony, complete with Santa, reindeer, and food trucks. We first went through the market and chatted with my cousin, Natalie, who was manning a booth with a friend. Then we headed out to get some dinner from the food trucks. The reindeer were just pulling in when we went outside :) They had three trucks, Fiore Pizza, Charlie Boy's BBQ, and Waffle Love. I opted for the pizza, and Matt and Henlie got some Waffle Love. The pizza took much longer than they anticipated, but at least Waffle Love offered cocoa :) Matt and Henlie finished their waffle before my pizza was even done. Then Henlie shared a piece of my pizza :) It was tasty, if a bit oily, though.