Christmas Baking

The girls & I made cookies to give to their teachers for Christmas presents. They helped me cut out and decorate and then I added some other goodies to the boxes & delivered them to the school.

It is very hard to let 5 year olds have their artistic way with a bag of icing! I wanted them to be part of it since it was a gift from them but I looked over and saw Sweetie had a 3 inch high pile of squiggles on ONE cookie!
Lovey painstakingly made designs on her cookies, outlining and adding polka dots and stripes etc.
Honey was most interested in the cookie she was making for herself that she made out of a circle & two candy canes. Sweetie thought of putting these shapes together to make a girl with pigtails and Honey made one too.

Too Hasty

I pressed "publish" a little too soon! Here are more pictures LOL

Here's their first picture with Santa from 2005 or maybe it was 2006? One of the girls must have been taking pictures while I was decorating.

Fa La La La La

Ahhhh the excitement builds! We went and picked out our tree on Friday night and immediate bouncing off the walls ensued. They were sooooooo wound up it was hilarious. They couldn't stand still, everything was at top volume and they were so happy. Christmas is so much fun!

The next day was equally crazy! As soon as they woke up they went to the decorations box & started digging stuff out! They did get all their jobs done with not too much prompting and then I let them watch cartoons while I went to my circuit class.

I left right after. No loitering, chatting or extra cardio (gee darn!). I came home and started putting our traditional "stuff your face while trimming tree" snack buffet :)

Then we went downstairs and started putting on ornaments. They love digging out their old stuff and remembering the ornaments Grammie & Grandad give them each year. The tree is trimmed very enthusiastically and when Murray quietly slipped away, they immediately wanted to know where he went! No escape for you hawney! Hee hee! We immediately started chanting "Daddy's ruining Christmas! Daddy's ruining Christmas!" until he came back to decorate with us.
He was allowed some breaks to gather sustenance from the snack table but had to stay in the room. He helped them hang a lot of their ornaments so they weren't all at the 4 foot mark!
We whipped through the ornaments and then had to get ready for a birthday party next door and ran over there for a couple hours.

When we came back, it was time for Murray & I to get cleaned up to go out for dinner. One of Murray's coworkers has a birthday this week and the guy's girlfriend arranged for a bunch of his family & work friends to meet for supper as a surprise. We had a great time! The food was delicious and she brought a birthday cake (and couldn't finish her nachos, I LOVE eating with people with small appetites!!!) and she kept us in stitches. She was so entertaining that I talked Murray into going back to their place afterwards so I could hear what other outlandish stuff she would come up with. We had so much fun. I hope there are more company events!!! We didn't get home til 10:30 and our poor babysitter was exhausted (mostly because she didn't sleep the night before!). We don't normally stay out that late so I felt a little guilty but I pulled lots of 1 & 2am babysitting stints as a teen so I figured it wasn't too bad. We'll buy her something nice for Christmas!

The Snow Is Back!

Winter weather is upon us & just in time for Christmas! The kids are thrilled to play out in the snow again and are slowly relearning to get themselves dressed in all the gear. Each morning is a little touch & go as we nudge them along through breakfast, getting dressed, teeth, hair & finally getting outerwear on. We haven't missed the bus yet but there have been a few close calls!Honey decided to be brave and climb the tree this time and got quite a ways up and managed to get herself back down afterwards. She got a little nervous when she realized I couldn't come up and get her but she figured it out.

And even when we're outside playing, there's still lots to fight about! Sweetie made this huge snowball the other day when the snow was packy and was trying to roll it around the yard but it's getting pretty heavy & hard to move. Lovey started helping her push it and they were moving it along easily. Insert problem here.

Sweetie: I don't want her pushing it! I want to do it myself

Me: but you can't do it yourself, you were stuck!

Sweetie: It's MY snowball, MINE!

Me: she's helping you get it over there though

Sweetie: I DON'T WANT HER TO DO IT!!!!!!

and then collapsed to the ground to have a proper crying/screaming fit