I'm sure you could tell we were sick by just looking at all of this stuff on our kitchen counter! This was from a few weeks ago. I started it with a cold and even had an ear infection, passed it to Ross, and then both girls got sick. Molly wasn't too bad but Lucy ended up missing two days of school due to her cold and fever. It wasn't fun, but I was so thankful to have all of that happen a few weeks before Christmas instead of right at Christmas!
Our elves are so funny! They brought us a butter treet. A butter tree is just that - a tree made out of butter! And since it's butter the tree needed to stay in the refrigerator so they spent their whole day in there. I bet they were cold and ready to move on from that place!
We visited Santa a few weeks ago. Molly was really excited to go and I think Lucy was, but didn't really want to let on that she was excited. She's 10 1/2.......We went to Bass Pro and he is always such a nice Santa! We visited with him, rode the carousel, and took a few pictures. It was a nice time!
We went to Kansas City last weekend for Christmas with Ross' family and it was a really nice time! We went up Friday after school and got there just in time for a delicious steak dinner. Ross' brother and his family came over to visit a bit and have dessert with us. We hadn't visited with them in quite a while so it was nice to catch up.
The next morning we celebrated Christmas with Larry and Wanda and got some fun gifts! Wanda had a big Santa bag that was filled with two presents for each of us that were family gifts and lots of fun! It was very creative and a great idea! She also had a big Nativity calendar with doors to open and had some nice surprises in the boxes for each of us. It was a fun way to give gifts.
We went shopping that afternoon and had Chick fil A for lunch, which the girls loved. We went back to their house and had a pizza dinner before heading home. We were all tired, but it was a very nice Christmas in Kansas City!
I have two caroler Christmas decorations in the basement this year. These carolers were my mom's and I remember them being out at her house when I was growing up. A few years back she let me have them to use at my house. I don't think they were something I really wanted, but took them because I needed something to go along with some other kid decorations I have.
Right now I have them on a side table in the basement and one night when we were watching TV together I told Lucy that the carolers were looking at her. She looked at me and said, "Yeah, they look like this," and made the face in the picture below. I thought it was so, so funny! She's kept making this face off and on this Christmas season and each time it makes me laugh like the first time I saw it!
Each year at Christmas we make "cookie cutter cookies" and roll them out in Christmas shapes. Last Sunday we took the time to decorate them. I enjoy doing this and all of us, including Ross, work on it. Our cookies are never real lookers, but we have fun and they're good!
This year we've all been watching the Holiday Baking Championship on the Food Network and when the girls were frosting cookies they were pretending that they were on the show! It was so much fun! We all agreed that none of us would win, but that's okay!
This is the first year that I did not decorate any cookies because I was busy making cinnamon rolls and candy! Each year I make cinnamon rolls for us to have on Christmas morning and I also give some to our neighbors. I expanded my giving this year to include another set of neighbors and a friend, so I wanted to make sure the cinnamon rolls were extra good. And boy were they ever! I wish I would have made more to have for myself because these rolls turned out soooo good this time!
I also make some candy - chocolate covered popcorn and some chocolate dipped pretzels. It was a busy, but fun baking day!
After probably eleven years of owning a second-hand fonue pot we finally had fondue last Saturday night! Eleven or twelve years ago Ross and I went to the city-wide indoor garage sale that's held every January. We saw this fondue pot and thought it would be fun to have. It was a fair price so we bought it.
It has literally sat in our cabinet ever since and we have never used it! We've talked about it and joked about it quite a few times over the years but never actually used it. Ross saw an ad for a cheese fondue kit at Aldi last week and we deicded it was finally time to try fondue!
We put the cheese in the pot to start melting and wondered if something was wrong with it because it smelled bad to us - like a cross between yeast and wine! Ross looked up the types of cheese that were in the kit and found that it does have wine in it and that it pairs nicely with wine. As the cheese melted the taste got a little better, but needless to say, the girls did not like it!
We still had fun with it and dipped some bread pieces into the cheese. We will definitely use this pot again soon, but will use some cheese we know we will like!
Advent began on Sunday, December 3, and we started out advent book again. I think this is the third year now that we've done this book and I really like it. We light the advent candles each Sunday and then each night we have a few pages that we read and have discussion questions. It's a great way to remember the true meaning of the season!
I was in charge of our PTA Fall Fest again this past October and it went off without a hitch! If there was one thing bad about it, it would be the weather! It turned very cold that night (at least very cold for October 6) and was windy. We think the weather kept some people away, but overall we had a good turnout and raised about $3,000 that night. I was in charge of organizing all of it and I think I did a pretty good job! It's a big task to undertake and I am always glad when it's over, but it is fun!
