Cookies for Santa

On Christmas Eve we decorated cookies for Santa.  The kids were in charge of frosting them.  They did a great job and had a lot off. 

Early Christmas Present

My parents got the kids a basketball banker for Christmas.  So far the weather has been nice, for December, so they can actually use it.  It probably won't stay that way for long though.  This was the first day after we (Jake) got it put together.

Thanks so much Grandma and Grandpa!

Gingerbread Houses

We decorated gingerbread houses one night before Christmas.  It is a tradition that we do gingerbread of some sort.  We don't always do a house, sometimes we make a train, and this year we did both. Houses and a train.  It is fun and I think the kids eat more of the candy than ends up on the houses but that's okay too.

Building the houses.

It takes lots of patience to get the roofs on.

Myles was "testing" the frosting.

Decorating time.

Basketball

Ashton wanted to play basketball this winter on the traveling team so we signed him up.  They have practice a couple of times a week and then tournaments on Saturdays.  The first few were "non competitive tournaments" meaning that they didn't keep score and were just getting a feel for how to play the game and learning skills.  Competitive tournaments start after the first of the year.  He had a really steep learning curve because he had never played before and most of these kids had.  But I think he is doing great so far.   And he is making good friends and learning a lot both about basketball and being a good teammate and competitor.  Our neighbor, Paul, is the coach because Reid is also on the team.

 

Also as part of the association the kids got to play in a mini game at half time of the high school boys basketball game.  It was really fun for them.

Here is Ashton setting a nice pick for his teammate.  

Another tournament

Nice rebound.

Decorating for Christmas

We put up our tree on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  That is when we usually do it.  I love turning on Christmas music and letting everyone help with the decorating.

Brotherly Love

One of the best things about being a mom is when you catch your kids in moments like these!  I love that these two are such good friends.  Even with a 7 year age gap.

Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving as a family.  Jake was in outage at the power plant, working nights.  Seems like that happens almost every year.  Don't really like it. but sadly we are getting used to it.   We'd much rather spend it with family, but since that isn't really an option we try and make the best of things. We had the usual foods, turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, and brussel sprouts.  We got pies from Perkins (they were delicious) and I made my Grandma Vee's rolls.  They turned out pretty good for my first attempt.  While we waited for Jake to wake up and the turkey to cook the kids colored on the table cloth.  It was so much fun, everyone enjoyed it.

The kids asked me if we could get one every year.  Absolutely!