"Gingerbread" houses and Christmas trees

The kids are jumping into Christmas traditions this year - asking a week ago to make gingerbread houses.  I had planned to pick up some fun candy at the store for that project but they really wanted to make them last Sunday afternoon so we rounded up what we had and they went to town.  We just use graham crackers because it's easy and the kids only want to eat the candy and frosting anyway.

Clare's finished stable.

Enjoying her leftover chocolate chips.

 Mom was visiting on Saturday so we took the kids on a Christmas tree hunt.  Matt was off disassembling a greenhouse that we had recently acquired for free.  :-)  Our goal on Saturday was to pick out a tree and then come back Sunday with Matt to cut it down.  Here are the littles in the Burley stroller:

Although it pulls amazingly well in snow, the field was only partially covered in snow so it didn't glide and required some serious pulling.  There's a very handy waist belt on this ski stroller but when I don't have a waist right now, the belt kept falling and I had to just pull it with my hands.  Let's just say we didn't get very far before we decided to head back.

Karl eating snow (balsam fir in background was his choice for a Christmas tree).

Clare picked out many, many trees, all spruce and all poky.  So we said we'd make our final decision on Sunday.   Sunday we headed out again, with a light snow falling and the kids in regular sleds:

Clare pulled Karl for quite a way and attempted to pull them both for awhile.

Snow eater.  :-) 

Clare was trying to prove to Matt how "soft" these trees were - then he suggested running her hand the other way along the branch.  She agreed that Karl's balsam might be the better choice.

Now the tree is drying and awaiting decoration tomorrow!

Two more photos of the past week:

This girl loves her Nutribullet smoothies!  The other kids have wised up to the hidden greens but she loves them.

Nora is such a climber.  I don't know how this girl has such good balance except that she's had a LOT of practice: