Christmas traditions

Christmas traditions at our house mean a lot to us. There has only been two years since I was 23 that I have had to decorate the tree alone. My children use to partake in this activity until they grew up, moved out and had their own tree to decorate and their own traditions to establish.

This year I was lucky enough to have the pleasure of Amber's company here to help decorate the tree. Here is a photo of her hanging up an ornament on a partially decorated tree. The next photo is one of "Bumpa", Amber and Drew warming their feet by the fireplace. This isn't a tradition, but Bumpa thinks we should make it one! Bumpa thinks any time he is laying down in front of the fireplace should be turned into a family tradition! In all fairness to Bumpa, he has been working 6 and 7 days a week lately, so I'm sure laying down anywhere, anytime feels good to him!
We also make several different kinds of cookies for the holidays. This year we baked peanut butter, oatmeal, chocolate chip, snickerdoodles and sugar cookies. We even decorated the sugar cookies, but with little ones helping with the frosting, I think more cookies and frosting were eaten than decorated.

Something new that Amber and I did this year was to make a Gingerbread house and decorate it. It came as a kit, but let me tell you they are not as easy as they sound. We both got a little frustrated but she did most of it with minimal supervision and this is the finished product......... I don't think it turned out too badly, do you?