It has been a busy month!

This past month has been very busy as I am sure everyone can say the same thing. It is a tradition in my house to start the annual Christmas decorating the day after Thanksgiving. It is a very big process in my house. I have a total of 6 Christmas trees that are 6 feet tall or higher as well as a spattering of smaller trees. I enjoy every single minute of getting the decorations set up. This year I was a bit worried because Holly is normally in school from the Monday after Thanksgiving until the Friday before Christmas. This year the school changed its track off time and she was off from Thanksgiving and she will go back on January 4th. I was worried about being able to get everything done with her being off. It turns out this actually worked so much better. She got to help me which she loves. This is what my staircase that goes upstairs looked liked. I am all about Disney and I love to hang these special Mickey and Minnie stockings there.

This is my Disney village. I love to look at it when it is all lit up. This is also one of Holly's favorite things.

This is my tree that is in my dining room. It looks so cozy right in the corner.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care! The year Chris and I were married I made each of us a stocking. After each of the girls were born I made them a stocking too. The girls love to hang these up and look forward to seeing what Santa has left inside for them on Christmas morning.

This is my main tree. It sits in the living room. This is what I think of as a traditionally decorated tree. By that I mean it has all different kinds of ornaments on it, colored lights, gold garland and icicles on it. This is the kind of tree that I grew up with and I love it. I also go to my parents house and decorate their tree for them every year. It is also a tradition and one that really means alot to me. There is NOTHING like decorating the Christmas tree while listening to the Christmas music that I grew up with. I plan to transfer the records onto CD's this year so that I can enjoy them here as well.

Holly got a new outfit and was really excited about it. She wore it to Church on Christmas Eve and felt really happy about it. She is really into clothes right now.

Alissa was in the Christmas parade with the band. She actually had to carry a sign this year. She had to borrow a warm up jacket from one of the color gaurd girls. It turns out that she wore Danielle's jacket and that is her own middle name. She got a big kick out of that.

It was very, very cold the night of the parade. Holly and Chris were all bundled up. We had to get there really early to drop Alissa off so we had a very long wait. It was fun though.

The band performed very well. We cheered loudly for them as they walked by. We also gave Bruce some cheers as he always drives his truck and pulls the band trailer everywhere.

We were able to squeeze in a Girl Scout meeting this month. We decorated little gingerbread houses. The girls had sooooooooo much fun. I think that they actually ate more of the M&Ms then went on their houses but it was worth it because they had a blast.

It was neat to see the difference in each girls house. They used gum drops and candy canes and sprinkles to dress up their houses. They all really enjoyed themselves.

Next it was onto my first cookie exchange party. It is something that I am definitely going to make a yearly tradition. Everybody brought wonderful cookies and then after the exchange everyone went home with close to 6 dozen cookies. It was really nice to just relax and enjoy spending time with my friends. I really missed a couple of my friends that were not able to be there.

This year I tried a new recipe. Oh my gosh I just have to say it was a huge it and they were wonderful. I love to bake so much and at this time of year I do so much baking. I package it up and give it to my friends as a gift. Everybody seems to really look forward to it every year. I like to try to add something new if I can and this year I found the perfect addition.

I baked 102 gingerbread cookies, 102 snowflake sugar cookies, 60 shortbread cookies, 60 peppermint blizzard cookies, 2 9x11 baking dishes of fudge, 80 jam thumb print cookies, 120 peanut butter blossom cookies, 48 choconut balls dipped in chocolate and 120 cookie dough truffles. This was in addition to the 60 peppermint blizzard cookies that I made for the exchange as well as the 48 cookie dough truffles and the 48 snowflake cookies. It was all so much fun.

This is just to show some of my cookies waiting to be packaged.

These always look so nice when they are done.

Onto Christmas Eve and the pageant at Church. Holly was an angel. She really enjoyed participating in this. She is hoping to be in the Nutcracker again next year though.

Christmas morning we were able to surprise Alissa with an Ipod. We had her convinced that she wasn't getiing one. Santa brought the girls a Wii. It was a huge hit. Everyone was happy.

I feel extremely blessed to have been able to share another year with my wonderful family and friends. This year was a struggle for me in many ways with my health issues. I look forward to a happy and healthy New Year. I wish everyone the best for the coming year.









Holly set up her Barbies and then put all of Tiffany's army men up to guard them. She said that the Barbies are celebrities and they needed army protection. That girl cracks me up!