what we've been up to

It's December... hooray! We've been having a great time decorating for Christmas, having my mom visit for a long weekend, watching classic Christmas movies, and counting down the days. Every year gets more and more fun with the kids getting older and understanding more about what's happening.

I always love decorating the tree as a family... it is so
festive
chaotic
magical
and
lovely

What good is a John Deere tractor ornament if it doesn't get some good play time?
(I bet no one else can claim to having at least 10 tractors on their tree)

And who knew that Joseph from our "Little People" nativity drives his own tractor?
(Andrew knew it, I guess).

My mom helped us make mini gingerbread houses this year.
Sarah did so great making marshmallow snow.
Andrew wanted to pick all the candy off.

And Emma licked to her hearts content.

This past weekend, Dennis was in charge of a fund-raising chili dinner for the local Rotary club. He started out by bringing home:
50 lbs. of hamburger
3 huge bags of onions
and more tomato sauce and diced tomatoes than I've ever seen.
I couldn't resist snapping a picture of him with the 6 gallon bucket of chili.
This wasn't even half of it!
P.S. That's a man-sized bite if I've ever seen one.

Other than helping here and there with the chili, my job was to make 10 dozen chocolate chip cookies. I had a very cute "helper" taste-testing the 5 lb. bag of chocolate chips. It was a thankless job, but Andrew was happy to do it.