Christmas Preparations!

I am not sure where to start in talking about all we did to get ready for Christmas. There was the gift buying, cookie making, decorating, snow playing, movie watching, card sending, etc. It seemed like so much work, but a lot of fun as well.

I guess I will start with making Christmas ornaments. Charlie brought home a magazine from school that had directions in it on how to make the salt and flour Christmas tree ornaments. We decided to do this and had a great time. I think the recipe made 50 ornaments or so. I decorated a few, Jack and Dad a few and Charlie about 40. He sat in the kitchen until he was done decorating every last one. Then we set up our old Christmas tree in their bedroom and decorated it with all of the ornaments. This is something we will do next year as it was a lot of fun.

Then was cooking making. I didn't get many photos of this, but I got a photo of the boys counting out Hershey's kisses for the peanut butter blossom cookies. Charlie was so cute and serious about counting them all out. Then they both helped to unwrap them all. They took this job very seriously!

Next came new Christmas jammies for the boys. This year they were green flannel with sock monkeys on them.

Next came the first big snowstorm/blizzard of December 2009. This happened mid-month and we had three days off of school. They boys had fun playing outside and helping Daddy shovel, sort of.

One night before Christmas we made Christmas trees out of our food for dinner. We used french toast for the tree, bacon for the trunk and powdered sugar for the snow and sprinkles for the decorations. The boys enjoyed this and ate it all up.Doug and the boys did the Gingerbread house one night. It went pretty well. Each year it looks a little better.

Charlie had his kindergarten Christmas program. It was really nice and they sang some really cool songs. Some were traditional and some not so much. I couldn't get any really great photos because it was really crowded and the view wasn't so great.

I think that is about it. I am sure there is more we did of which I didn't take photos. There is definitely stuff that we didn't get to do that I had wanted to! Maybe next year!