Getting Ready For Christmas

As tradition would have it, I started decorating for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving.  Liz and I decorated the formal tree and everyone pitched in to decorate the tree in the playroom.  Mad props to Jeremiah because he smiled patiently, at times sarcastically, through the entire process. 

It took a while to figure out where I wanted the formal tree.  After trying different layouts, we ended up with the very first one.  We put everything back in it's original place and put the tree in a corner.  

A girl after my own heart!  Scarlett exercised some serious ninja skills to get several ornaments on the playroom tree.  That's right, baby!  You make that tree beautiful by any means necessary!

    

Then she got really ambitious and tried to get even higher.  Jeremiah stepped in to help her...mostly to make sure that she didn't fall out the window.  I was okay with that.

My little elves worked so hard and I was so proud.  Sniff sniff. 

 When we were finished decorating the tree, I found this cutie fast asleep.

Here's what the front of our new house looks like.  It's a Tudor style home and while I wasn't crazy about the elevation, it wasn't a deal breaker.  I took this picture mostly as a reference for next year to remind me what we did for Christmas decorations.  I'm sure we'll do something different next year because of my mild case of ADHD. 

Another picture for reference.

Fall Has Come & Gone

When the temperature gets below 50 degrees, I usually stay inside because it's too cold for me to get out.  I hate the cold and it makes me miserable.  Period.  There were a couple of days that the girls and I spent inside until it warmed up again.  There were also quite a few tender moments but these are the ones I want to remember so I am blogging about them.

One day I heard the girls snickering, laughing and playing in the kitchen.  When I snuck up on them, they were just playing away and getting along so well.  I hope they continue to be great sisters to each other.  

 In the spirit of "what does the fox say", one of our crafts this season was to assemble and decorate a fox.  They girls did pretty well and the foxes turned out great.

Happy belated Thanksgiving!  Unfortunately, this was the only picture that I took the entire day.  We were just relaxing after dinner and these two looked so sweet together.

Goodbye fall (and leaves) and see ya next year.

Leaves

We have experienced our first fall in our new house.  One of the many things that I love about this house are the 19 mature trees that are beautiful.  When it was spring and summer, I loved to hear the wind rustle the leaves.  Now that fall has come and gone, most of the leaves have fallen.  Our neighbors are out every two weeks or so raking leaves because there are that many.  

In the spirit of teaching our children how to work and serve others, we headed out to rake half of the driveway.  I think we had five or seven bags just from the driveway.  The girls did well and I was so proud of them.  By the way, I finally paid someone on Tuesday to come rake the leaves because the job was/is just too big.  The crazy thing about the leaves...they're back already!  You can't even tell the yard or the driveway was raked!

They are working so hard and taking their assignments very seriously.

Savannah had to spend some time in timeout because she kept destroying the piles that Scarlett and I worked so hard on.  She was exceedingly happy when timeout was over.

  When most of our work was done, I let the girls play in the last pile.  Don't you love to see your children happy?  I sure do :o)