Christmas Decorating

Decorating the Christmas Tree

The kids had so much fun decorating the Christmas tree this year. Keegan knew he was "in charge", Kaden thought he was "in charge", Kassidy didn't like anyone telling her they were "in charge" and I let them do whatever they wanted to do because really, I didn't want to be "in charge". They did a great job and they were so happy with themselves. I was just happy that I was done cleaning up broken ornaments and searching for missing gold colored ornament hooks stuck in the medium tan carpet (not so much fun).

As you can tell, most of the decorations made it to the bottom of the tree and mainly on one side. I was up for another 2 hours re-decorating the tree. The kids woke up the next morning and had no clue anything had been changed...thank goodness!

Our First Gingerbread House

The kids wanted to decorate a gingerbread house this year, so I caved in and bought them one from WalMart. I used to make them out of grahams crackers and frosting when I was younger, how much different could it be? Well, with a 4 & 5 year old, it was MUCH different. First of all, from the moment the candy, frosting and gingerbread pieces came out, the boys were fighting over who got to hold which piece of cookie or who was "in charge" (there's that word again) of the candy. With both of them sneaking candy and licking the packets of frosting when I wasn't looking, it was fun seeing them have so much fun (probably because of the sugar high!).

For those that know me, I'm sooooo not crafty, but to the kids it didn't matter, they loved it and Kaden kept telling me what a "beautiful" gingerbread house we made for Santa Claus!

p.s. The gingerbread house was partly eaten and the most of the candy picked off by the next day. Santa never had a chance!

Decorating the House With Lights and
Putting Up the Stockings

One of the best parts of living in Arizona during the winter months is you can put up Christmas lights in the month of December. In Utah, you have to put your lights up between Halloween and Thanksgiving, because it gets so cold. The kids loved the lights and thought it was so cool that daddy put them around the cactus without hurting himself.

We almost didn't have stockings this year, I searched high and low through I don't know how many boxes in the garage and couldn't find them anywhere. The boys were so sad, so I decided to go back out there and give it another try. After more digging, and moving around 50 boxes or so in a small confined place, I finally found them! The kids were so excited that I found them (it just made them sick to their stomachs to think that they would miss out on the candy and toys on Christmas morning.) So guess what happens Christmas morning? Yep, all that digging and moving boxes around and they forget about them! So I went ahead and passed them their stockings and their faces lite up one second and then they were covered with chocolate the next. I'm just glad that they had a fun time!