Cramming Christmas

On Monday we finally kicked off the Christmas festivities. Up to that point we had one Family Home Evening about Christmas trees, taught by Alyssa. And we had a tree up finally, and our shopping was done. But that's it.

Since it is now officially Christmas break, we are cramming in the cheer. Monday we hit the store to get all the traditonal Christmas eats. Then we went light seeing. There is one street here called Christmas Lane that is pretty good. Everyone puts up lights, nothing ridiculous like you see in California, but at least they are trying. There is also one house not far from us that we love. And another house that syncs up their lights to music. Oh, and our favorite is a guy who sets up a massive model train display in his yard. But that's about it. Most people don't put up a single strand. Embarrassingly enough, we are amongst the lightless this year. Usually we decorate but I told you this year there has been no time.

If you are from California you know why I am being snobby about lights. People put up carnivals in the yard, or real, ride-on trains. They wrapping paper the garage doors, do window displays, the works. My sister was telling me yesterday about a neighborhood she was taking her son to with 12 houses all synced up to music together. Ridiculous! There are some houses where they pass out hot chocolate and do a salute to the troops and all manner of Christmas madness. I miss the California lights. Oh well, we've got snow. Doesn't get much more Christmasy looking than that.

Tuesday we finally had enough snow to play in. We spent a couple hours outside playing!

I think Chloe is at a slight disadvantage in this snowball fight. No gloves, and no eyes! Poor thing.

Run Chloe, run!

Snowball in flight, can you see it?

Me and the girls decided to shovel since it was actually pretty warm (32ish) Alyssa used the bottom half of our old broken shovel to clear the sidewalk.

Chloe used the handle of the old shovel to get in the way

I finished the whole driveway! There wasn't that much snow but it was wet and heavy and I made Alyssa snap this shot to prove that I did manual labor. It was covered again by the time Seth got home. I tried!

Alex prefers not to be helpful, and was off doing this.

Chloe got cold because she kept taking off her gloves so I put her in the van. When I checked on her she was in paradise. Alyssa had left the goodies from her church teachers in the car and Chloe was feasting on peanut butter cups.

After we got all dried off and Seth got home, we painted sugar cookies. I prefer thicker sugar cookies with thick frosting but I told Alyssa we were going to do thin icing so that we could decorate more detailed cookies. She said, "you mean we get to be artistic this year?" She's a riot, that one. Two and a half hours later our cookies were painted and most of us were very happy with them. Alex asked if he could trade me cookies because he thought his were the worst ones. How sad! I assured him that his were exceptional. They were. He sat so still and worked on them so carefully. He was so happy to hear that I liked them. He lit up (his face, not a smoke)and said, "Really, mom?" and skipped away happy with his work.

Here are our creations.

Pretty good, until I saw this picture on the allrecipes home page this morning. Out-doilied again!

Oh well, they don't have these cookies.

I got the Christmas Story cookie cutters last Christmas from my brother, Steven. I have been waiting for a year to make these cookies. Aren't they so fun? Don't be jealous. Oh nevermind, be jealous. Even I am a little jealous of myself for owning something that cool.

Now Seth and Alyssa went with a more modern leg lamp, but I tried to stay true to the original.

Ralphie in his bunny suit was my favorite . I was so amused with myself, but maybe even more amused when I saw Seth's interpretation.

Alright, well I really have no time to chat, or proofread, or fix the pictures and captions that seem to be deciding for themselves today whether or not they want to be centered. I just wanted to hurry and post this because there is more madness coming and I don't want to overload you with it all in one post. We are having a movie party tonight and again tomorrow night (just us Johnson's, but we like to call everything a party or a field trip) so I must go do some last minute planning.

One thing I love about living far away is that I pay more attention to my kids. When I have friends and family here I get distracted and talk to them. When it is just me and the kids, I am a better mom and I will always cherish the memories of these years of partying together.