Rock, Paper, Scizzors... Shoe!

Lately Gabe and Zach have been enjoying the game "Connect Four" so often before bed we settle down to a tournament, to see who will be the evening's champion. Early on I realized that when we would play "rock, paper, scizzors" to see who would go first, not only did the boys end it by yelling "SHOE!" instead of "shoot" but they would get into a pattern and go through all three options repeatedly. I pointed this out to John, who think it is hilarious to play this with them, because he knows exactly which "hand" they will put forth next, but they have no idea how he knows. It's a riot.

for some reason, Zach loves to call this game "Ketchup vs. Mustard". Looks like ketchup won!

Decking the Halls, etc

AH, the happy prospect of eating the finished product!

Yes, in case you can't quite make it out, that IS an old fashioned playpen surrounding our glorious * fake (*see "Flashback:holiday hilarity, O Tanenbaum) tree.  It at least increases the likelihood that the tree will make it another week.

Every year we decorate a ginger bread house together - it was a tradition in my house growing up,when my mother would actually bake a legitimate ginger bread, and we would build a house. As I added children to my family, starting with my oldest two  who were the perfect ages for such festive crafts at seven and nine our first year together, we continued the tradition, and I recall one year when my cousin Marisa and I were the only ones actually invested enough in this tradition to put the effort into building and decorating the annual gingerbread home (at the time we had seven kids bewtween the two of us - none of whom cared to help).   This year my "big kids" were not here to help, and so we waited for Rilla to be sleeping, invited Nana over, and decorated our first ever pre-assembled house. Even the frosting was ready to go!

Oh man, am I in trouble when Nana sees this!

The Christmas Festival

This year our church decided to up the ante for the annual Christmas party and turn it into a festival complete with an outdoor live nativity, caroling, face painting, crafts, a bonfire, hayride and cooking baking/decorating. It was amazing! Friday I spent the day helping Laurie set up our cozy faux living room in the church foyer, and Saturday around 2 we all headed over to help with finishing touches before kicking things off. My  three middle children were all quite involved, and had a wonderful time celebrating Jesus' birth. Rilla was totally fed up with being at chruch AGAIN and it was a miracle I got to eat, and that only because someone else held her while I quickly piled yummy potluck food on my plate and scarfed it down. John was working but helped set up Friday and many of the ladies sent home leftovers for him.

Rilla was SUCH a help decorating the tree at the front of the church!

A very warm shepherd with one blue and one brown shoe (probably should have caught that one before we left the house).

One of the three wise men (insert "wise guy" comment here!)

Festive face painting!