December

December in Retrospect

December came and went faster than ever this year. It feels like Thanksgiving was just last week not Christmas. Since my busy schedule kept me from blogging I thought I would show a little of our December activities.

I unfortunatley didn't take as many pictures as I should have to document everything.

One of our first events of December was watching Riley sing at Our Lady of the Snow. It is a shrine that has beautiful Christmas lights every year.

One of my favorite events every year is the preschool Christmas program. This was Maggie's second year and next year will be Xavier's first. It is such a delight seeing the children sing there song and preform a little play for us.

Notice the microphone?? During the song Maggie kept leaning over to sing in it. ;)

A tradition at Riley's school is K-3 gets to make gingerbread houses. The parents get together to assemble the "gingerbread houses" a few days before the event. Then everyone sends candy in for the kids to decorate thier house. The kids really enjoy this activity. This was Riley's last year. :(

As room parent I get the priveledge to doing the kids class parties. This year we painted Christmas ornaments for the parents. Then we ended it with some yummy pizza. Since I am SOOO GOOD. We were done 1/2hr early so we played a rousing game of charads.
Finally we went to see Santa Riley's last day of school before the holidays. What a great day we had with the kids. After seeing Santa we went to see BOLT (what a great movie) and went to dinner. I think this will have to be a new family tradition.

Thanksgiving

Oops!

I forgot Thanksgiving.

Since I didn't get to my project today that I was going to post about. A crazy busy week kept me from posting last week. I thought I would back track and post about Thanksgiving.

After our big meal we had to take our walk with Grandpa. It helps digest the turkey.(So you have room for MORE!)

We had such beautiful weather we had to take a tractor ride. LOOK I caught Riley smiling!

Holiday

Cookie Weekend!

Every year my Mom and I have a "cookie weekend". It has become such a traditon that everyone that recieves our creations start asking the 1st of Dec. "Have you had cookie weekend yet?" Well actually our husbands co-workers. ;) 

This year I brought Maggie and Xavier to join in on our fun. They love helping in the kitchen so we all had our matching aprons and headed to Grandma's house. This is a 3 day event. Starting Friday afternoon and ending in a fog of flour dust on Sunday evening. 

Friday night we started by making the cut out cookies. 

On Saturday Mom and I made most of the cookies. 

Here is a list:

coffee spice cookie

snickerdoodlesx2

peanut butter kissx2

sugar cookies

milk choc chip

hello dollies

white choc cranberry x2

Mrs Fields mud bars x2(my favs)

eagle brand fudge

white fudge

saltine candy

dipped choc pretzels

On Sunday we finished up with

Cranberry bread

poppyseed bread

perpermint bark

Kifli cookies

Once Riley came down on Sunday we decorated our cut out cookies.
Our beautiful decorated cookies!

After an exhausting weekend this is the table of our hard work. Most of my family thinks we are crazy but love the treats they get at the end. ;)