It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Pretty much since the last piece of pie was eaten on Thanksgiving, we've been preparing the house for Christmas.  We haven't had much snow to speak of and the weather is very mild, but we are getting in the festive mood!

 

The boys and Molly and I decorated a small tree and made a star for the top.  I won't ruin the surprise of where this tree ends up.  A word about the expression on Dom's face...I took two pictures and this was the better one.  Though the culprit in the other was William.

Our shoes awaiting the arrival of St. Nick (December 6).  Dom attempted to put out all of his shoes, but we dissuaded him from this.  Apparently, not everyone in America follows this tradition.  Luckily, I grew up in a household that did.  A good fortune that allowed me to win my table a round of drinks at a holiday party when the question was asked "What do children in Germany do the night before December 6th?"  Other people were looking up the answer on their smart phones.  I guess it just pays to be smart...and to have a German professor as a father!

The most popular gifts received were the slipper socks.  It worked out well as we had the heat off all day due to water in our vents.  I'll have another post about that later.  The boys were quite fashionable and had them pulled up to their knees on the outside of their pants most of the day.

Even Molly received a gift or two from the good saint.  And she loves them!

A later gift was a child friendly copy of "A Christmas Carol".  We've read it a few times and I will often catch Dominic paging through it on his own.

The second weekend of December we went to find our Christmas tree.  It was a beautiful day, but one of the coldest we've had.  I think we picked out the best tree we have ever had.  And I'm not just saying that.  I would also like to add it was much easier to walk around with Molly on my back than how I had to carry her last year!

We seem to have a tradition now of getting our tree on the second Saturday and then spending the afternoon of Sunday decorating it.  It was a wonderful afternoon with Christmas Carols playing a fake fire going on the tv (Thank You Netflix!).  The tree was a little bottom heavy with decorations.  Something we rectified as soon as Molly woke up from her nap.

The finished product.  Picture taken by D. Joseph Buschelman.

And here is our other tree in the family dog, Katie.  Sadly, the star blew off a couple of days later.  Probably should have glued it to the aluminum foil.  Ah well, live and learn.

I made it a priority to be done with Christmas shopping and wrapping by late last week (don't be too impressed, I'm not quite done, yet, but I did come pretty close to my goal) so that this final week of Advent could be devoted to baking and candy making.  The boys have helped with just about every aspect of the food prep.

And it has been a lot of fun.  Well, except for a tense moment last night when I was trying to roll out Springerli.  Though, I've decided that as long as they taste good, I won't sweat about the appearance.  Besides, I can always blame it on William.

My favorite part about having them help is that they insist on trying everything. The most helpful thing they did was unwrapping the hershey kisses while I rolled out the dough for peanut butter blossoms.  Oddly, the package was short a few candies...