The week before Christmas (one month later)

After our visit with Ann, Aaron, and Festus in Abilene, we made the short drive to Lawrence.   Dad and I made short work of unpacking our superbly packed vehicle.  I quickly starting moving things around to make room for our items.  And pretty soon it was time to head to Lee Summit to see cousin Peter perform in his Christmas show.   I was exhausted, but it was a treat to see the cousins get together.  Margaret and Molly are starting to form a little group of their own which is a treat to see (and also a little scary).  Molly soon showed Margaret the way to misbehave...by running in a giant circle in Panera's.  Margaret's route was a little smaller, but only because her legs are shorter.  She'll get the distance up in no time!

Mitzi arrived in Lawrence a couple of days later and the Christmas prep really sprang into action!

 Aside from some Christmas shopping and initial Christmas baking, we needed to cut down our Christmas tree.  Our family uses a cedar tree for Christmas.  It has a nice scent, there is a lot of space between branches for ornaments and candles (real candles that we light with real fire), and while others pay well over $50 for their Christmas trees, our family is able to find ours for free on friends' property.  The slight difference this year was that our friend found a forest of cedars on the side of the road and contacted his acquaintance to ask permission if we could cut one down.

 It was one of the easier ventures.  Which was great because the bottom dropped out on the temperature and it was freezing.  AND Molly did not take a nap so she was a thrill to be around.

 But, that didn't stop her from wanting to help. 

 I believe she fell asleep within 3 minutes of getting back in the car.

 Back at Barker, Nana took on the added stress of allowing the kids to help in the kitchen. 

 L'Opa and Will took on the task of decorating the tree.  And they did a beautiful job.  Not to mention had some great conversations about just about anything that popped up in Will's head.  Though, perhaps some of the conversations were a little one-sided.

 One night, after Will and Molly had retired to bed, Dom stayed up later to help roll out Springerli.  He was very proud of his work and requested I take pictures of all of the steps.  In the above picture, Nana is helping him cut out the cookies.

 By the end, he was cutting them out himself.  He wanted to make sure that I documented the event. 

 As I was looking at these pictures, it made me think of some pictures we took 7 years ago:

 Dom was probably about 2 months old and we had put him to bed and had a little time on our hands...

 Naturally, we broke out the Springerli recipe and tried our hands at it.

 No wonder Dom wanted me to take pictures of him.  Clearly, we were pretty proud of ourselves as well.  I'm pretty sure Dom's turned out better, but it is nice to have the pictures together.

Back to the present...sort of.

 My good looking kids.  Dom and Will sported those sweaters for Mass every weekend of our trip.  Until we went to Mass in San Antonio and it was over 70 degrees.

 Molly loved Mitzi's selfies.  As soon as she spotted Mitzi's phone, she was ready with a pose.  Check out her nice boots.  We were on the receiving end of a second winter storm, so I broke down and bought all of the kids the same style of black boots.  And the basically wore them for the remainder of our stay in Kansas and Missouri.

 Dom posing with his Magnifikids.  If you are Catholic and have reading children, I highly recommend this periodical.  He follows along in the Mass and has learned many of the prayers this way. 

 Notice the sweaters?  If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

 And just a couple of cute pictures of Molly and Will.  What's the point of having your own blog if you can't put as many pictures of your kids as you possibly can.  Plus, I'm guessing most of my reader won't mind.

We had a lovely Christmas Eve.  Just like I remembered from growing up.  It had been 4 years since I got to experience it and I'm very glad that I got the opportunity to introduce my kids to the traditions.  Even if Will was slightly concerned about burning the candles on the tree.  Get in line, kid!

On a very exciting note, Eric was able to fly in on Christmas Eve, so it was very special to spend the holiday with him.  These are the magical years with our kids and they will go by so quickly.  I'm very glad he didn't have to miss it.