the fun side of things

Now that I have had my bah humbug post, let me assure you that things are actually quite festive around our house.  We have our tree up and decorated and much to the chagrin of my children we are playing my favorite Christmas game of stump the kids.  I rarely put names on gifts under the tree and the kids have to wonder and guess which one is theirs.  Before Christmas arrives they will have at least one named gift to shake and rattle, but most will be a surprise.


We have also been participating in Christmas activities with our wonderful group of home schooled families.  The kids decorated graham cracker houses and we now have a cute little gingerbread village on our hearth. 

We were a little later than usual putting up our tree this year since we were out of town when we would have normally done it, but it got done and I had a great time watching the boys help their Daddy get it set up.

D still likes to hang multiple ornaments on the same branch, but he is getting better!

LB and I spent Saturday morning shopping with Mama.  Mama got most of what she had left to do done while we were out and I got my niece and nephews finished in one stop, which was wonderful!  It was kind of fun to try to hide a couple of things from LB while I shopped.  I was able to buy one thing for her and some stocking stuffers for the boys without her knowing it.  She is a very sharp little girl and misses very little, so it was a challenge to distract her, but Mama helped and we got it done.  We finished up with lunch at Chik-fil-a.  The one closest to us has just re-opened after being remodeled.  Let me just say that it was absolutely crazy in there, but we enjoyed it anyway.

LB was in the city Christmas parade with her dance class on Saturday afternoon.  The weather was threatening to get bad, but thankfully the rain held off until after the parade was over.  It was quite cloudy and windy and I had a hard time getting any good pictures.  That kind of makes me sad since LB and her friend H got to carry the banner for their group.  This is one of LB's favorite Christmas activities and she was thrilled to get to carry the banner.  I wish I had a clearer picture of her smiling and waving as she passed us.

JW and me fighting over a Nestle's Crunch bar that was thrown during the parade.
He won, by the way ;-)

Sunday, after church and lunch, LB and I went to Mama's to make fudge for our cookie/candy swap (LB and H decided that it should be renamed the Sweet Swap ... maybe next year) with our Keepers group.  The idea was for each girl to choose a recipe that had some meaning to them and besides sharing the goodies, we would also share the recipe and why they had chosen it.  The recipe for fudge that we used was originally my Granny's recipe for chocolate cake icing.  It was the go to birthday cake for most of us kids growing up and still is a favorite of mine and what JW asked me to make for his birthday last month.  As a side note, my oldest brother and I had a great thing going when we were still at home ... I am not a big cake fan and he's not a big icing fan so we had a deal going where he would give me the icing off of his cake and I'd give him the majority of my cake ... worked out pretty good for both of us.   Mama also modified the recipe to make wonderful fudge, adding crunchy peanut butter (or just peanuts) and marshmallow creme.

LB's completed haul from the Sweet Swap

Added to these activities we had our Christmas fellowship at church following the choir singing on Sunday night.  As usual, we had a wonderful time with our church family.  Our pastor's wife gathered the kids around a table and Ronnie told them the Christmas story.  It looks like they were having fun with it.

I have one final picture to share with you, just a simple reminder of what it is all about.