Getting ready for Christmas

Ironically, Nora's favorite book as we head into the Christmas season is "The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything", a Halloween story.  Or as she calls it, "Pumpkin Boo-Boo".   She'll ask to have this read over and over and over: "Mama read Pumpkin Boo-Boo to Aiya!"  She can't say Nora so she usually refers to herself as Aiya.  "No silly Aiya; silly Mama!" is one of her favorite sayings.

The kids helped decorate Christmas cookies again this year.  These were supposed to be peanut butter  Christmas mice but only Karl helped make the mice.  The others wanted to make their own creations.

The kids' finished masterpieces:

This kid loves to play outside and make forts and dig with a shovel.  He'll say out long after Nora has gotten cold and goes inside.  The kids used to get hot cocoa after playing outside; now they just get the marshmallows since the little ones never drank the hot cocoa and left it to get cold on the table.

Decorating the tree.  I think we'll be able to put our tree up the weekend of Thanksgiving next year; our current tree has held up really well with a minimum of needles shed on the rug and it still looks great a week after Christmas.  That was the one disappointment the kids suffered this Christmas season - not being able to put the tree up on Black Friday like we usually do.  According to Clare, everyone in her class had their tree up the following Monday except her.

A real tree was a bit different than our fake one.  Much more beautiful but our ornaments needed hooks so they could fit along the entire length of the branch instead of being set only at the ends and dragging the branches to the floor.  We also had to leave about 1/4 of our ornaments in storage because they simply wouldn't fit.   Minor problems for the beauty of a real tree though!