Preparing for Christmas

The month of December we take school pretty easy. We do math each day until the week before Christmas and we did 2 weeks of History and Bible for the entire month. We spend a lot of our time doing crafts and making memories related to the holiday. I thought I would share some of the things we did together.

I did not take photos of our Christmas Card Day but we still did it. As a Stampin' Up! demonstrator you can imagine that I have oodles of stamps, ink colors, ribbons and card stock sitting around. My girls have watched for years as mom created cards, cut supplies and held classes in our home. A few years ago, Sissy asked if I would hold a "class" for them. So, this is our 3rd year where the girls get to make Christmas cards. Each of them picks 3 friends and we work together getting the job done.

We also enjoy Cookie Day as well. We do Cookie Day at a friend's house with her family and spend the entire day baking and then have dinner together. This year the girls got to decorate cookies twice. Our church was doing an event in which they wanted lovely platters of over 400 cookies available. So, they invited us to decorate one evening.

The girls enjoyed using the array of sprinkles, the pastry bags stuff full of yummy frosting, and hanging out with people from church that we have not gotten to know up to this point (we have about 450 people at our church).

As you can see, Sweet Baby was pretty serious about cookie decorating..she even wore her chef's hat. I love this photo...can you see what happens when mom turns her back for a minute? The end of her icing bag wasn't twisted tight enough and when she laid the bag down, the icing oozed out of the end of the bag!

The girls also tried their hand at making some ornaments using felt and hand stitching.

Each of them made the same ornament. I found the pattern on Pinterest. (I'm sorry that I can't seem to share the link with you...if you leave me a comment, I'll e-mail you the link.) Sissy cut all her pieces out herself, but I did cut the pieces out for the other girls. Some of the pieces were a bit small and it was hard for them to use the giant fabric scissors I have.

What amazed me was how long they all sat working. I tried for years to get Sweet Baby to do lacing cards but she never was interested and never could get the concept down. This was a chore for her and she needed a lot of help, but she just kept plugging along....

Working their fingers to the bone.....

Smiling as they went along....

Isn't it adorable???? The ornament...not the kid. Though, I think she is pretty adorable as well.

We also went Christmas caroling for the first time. We went with 2 other families (making our choir number 17. We all loved it (yes, even the husbands were smiling). It is a shame I didn't take photos. I'll have to take them next year.

We saw our first ever ballet, The Nutcracker. The consensus was that next year just mom and Peanut will be going.

We made "gingerbread" houses (yeah...we used graham crackers).

Sweet Baby made an apartment, while Peanut made a church. .Can you see her cross made from pretzels?

I'm thankful for cameras...after a very rough day of school yesterday - yes, rough enough that the thought "public school" even entered my mind for one of them, I have these photos to look back on and remember how blessed we are to be together each day and make these memories.