Having Ourselves A Merry Little Christmas

This evening as I picked up my family's Chick-fil-A dinner (don't judge me for fast food: some days you spend longer than you anticipated at the hair salon...) and the teenager at the window- who always tells me that it is her pleasure to serve- me changed her greeting to "Merry Christmas!"  How refreshing.  A cheerful Merry Christmas.  Not "lets decorate the 'holiday tree'" like at the library.  I had a very warm childhood Christmas season.  Lots of tradition, etc.  That's pressure when I think of trying to re-create those memories for my own children.  But, we are having a great season thus far. Our neighbors decorated their home right after Halloween, so Hope had been begging Dad to get out a tree for her to decorate.  Well, the trees are up, they are decorated and we are preparing our home, hearts for celebrating Christmas!

The kids win: colored lights are outside the house and on the playroom tree.

                                                          

Will is included in the tradition of painting our wrapping paper.  Grammy, I believe this one is yours.  Two fisted painting: 'at a boy Will!

Hadley...Yours is a two fisted job as well!

Another fun thing we love is our Ms. Patty Cake nativity.  I believe I've mentioned this video before.  It is highly....annoying   educational.  We hide the boxes throughout the house, then the kids find them and we read a story that concludes with "What God wants for Christmas...is YOU!"

Will has his own version of how this story goes.

Then, the cookie making production.  Day One:  Make the dough.  Look at that egg, what a crazy picture of an egg breaking!  We did this while Will was sleeping. 

But, on Day 2 (The REALLY messy day) I felt guilt and remembered that I, too, was the younger sibling and in a moment of weakness, or compassion- I'm not sure which- I decided to let Will participate.  I'm glad that I did, he really enjoyed it!  Just after this, Will rolled that rolling pin in his hair... Thus, the only cookies given out are most likely just going to grandparents.

Making the butter cream icing.

Cutting them out.  Hope is an old pro at this.

Will has had practice with play doh and isn't half bad himself.

But oh, then came the sprinkles. 

Even Hope went rogue on me during the sprinkle time.  At one point, they were shaking sprinkles onto the counter just so they could lick their hand and eat the sprinkles.  One day, they will be big, and I will miss this mess, won't I?