More Holiday Fun!

I love Christmas and all the fun things that come along with getting ready for it. J's been asking to make a gingerbread house so this weekend I broke down and bought one of the kits. We had fun making it. J helped decorate the house and one of the gingerbread men that came with it. N just got to help with a gingerbread man. I was surprised that I was able to get N to actually decorate a little bit before he ate all the candy and most of the cookie:


J cracked me up. After much encouragement from me, he put most of the candy on the house (instead of just eating it all). Then he worked on his cookie. I love how quickly it went from this:

To this:
Yes, he's just squeezing the icing into his mouth. A boy after my own heart :).

Our finished house:

We also got our Christmas tree. Can you guess where we bought it?
I love that picture. I think it's just too funny.

Anyway, here it is all decorated:

I put a lot less ornaments on this year as I only put select fragile ones on (all near the top). Despite the limiting of ornaments for fear of losing them to the whirlwind that is N and J, I really enjoyed being reminded of fond memories of wonderful people (especially my grandmother) as we decorated the tree. For the first time in many years, I actually remembered the garland this year. B also decided that we needed to hang candy canes on the tree this year (a first for me). B took J shopping for candy canes so most of them are very non-traditional (Sweet-tart flavored and Dora and Sponge Bob). The star on top was knit by me this year, not sure if I love it, but it will do. More details to come in a different post.

Hope you all are enjoying your holiday preparations. I know we are. As part of our fun, we also went to a local display of over 200 nativity scenes from all over the world. It was beautiful and amazing and a really nice reminder of the real reason for Christmas.

Hope all of your holiday seasons are full of joy and fun times spent with family and friends!