The Little Bits

Tannenbaum

We continue to decorate a Jesse tree throughout Advent until Christmas Eve, at which point we transform the tree into a gaudy expression of loveliness.

When the Big Night arrives, the girls always want to wear lights, and they get one calm turn each before total decorating chaos ensues.


Luci wasn't very impressed with the tradition.

Pip was Pip.

Millie thought she was royalty.

Royalty with a ragamuffin child...

Nixie was a pixie.

And the Bird?

She wanted to share the spotlight.

Nice hair, dolly!

Don't be fooled by how peaceful these two pictures look

The reason why there aren't any more is because the living room was CRAZY until the very last bulb in the box was slapped on the tree.


Phew. Until next year...

Small Gifts

More to come later.

Truffles of many flavors.

Jars of homemade sugar scrub.

And many containers of vanilla extract, ready to use next June. (Oops. I should have made it this past summer).

Can you tell Someone bought vanilla beans in bulk?

Making

Making one of our favorite cookies ever. Cherry-filled.

And mint-filled.

Making messes.

Making sugar cookies.

Making mischief.

Making moustaches.

Making men.

Sweets.

The Table of Sugar Consumption.

Top o' the mornin'.

The gingerbread girls.

Thankfully, Millie didn't notice that her counterpart was a little worse for the wear.

I made up for it by (accidentally) tempering the chocolate perfectly this year before pouring it into the molds. So glossy! So smooth and shiny!

Don't think I'm a bad mother. I'm just sentimental, and since Christmas morning was the only day of the year that I was able to eat sugar cereal as a child, I've continued the tradition with my own. Yeah! SUGAR CEREAL! It may not seem like much to you, but my girls think it's the best.

Plus, we drank eggnog.
Sugar, ho! (Ho, ho, ho.)

Gifts

Stockings.

Presents from Grandma and Grandpa:










McGamma, Luci was smitten with her Sing-a-Ma-Jig. She wouldn't let go of it and kept laughing and squealing as she held it (him? her?).





And I like that she and John's wonderful gift-topper/note holder to me share the same posture.

One of my favorite parts of the morning was watching Pip, wearing her nightgown backwards, ignore all the presents and hooplah in favor of sedately eating the orange from the toe of her stocking.

She's a peach.

Housing Dilemma

With a singular focus, Su helped me with the tedious job of gingerbread men decorating.

I love her.

They're homely, but DONE!

Then we led the first man to his home. He was ecstatic.

He became slightly less so as we led his siblings to the same home, and you should have heard his shrieks when we layered on the remaining 6 dozen!