christmas time is here....

on saturday we headed out to the great outdoors in search of the drake family christmas tree. ok, we didn't do it quite christmas vacation style, but went back to the little tree farm we found up here last year. this year, we discovered that we need to be there on the friday after thanksgiving at 9 when they open to select our tree. we chose a nice tree but many of the "good ones" were already tagged and purchased. one thing we are getting better at is finding a tree that fits in our house. we've always had a habit of picking a tree that was way too big. 

when we lived in paola we had a huge picture window and in 2009 this was the tree we found. it filled our living room to the point that we could only sit on one side of the couch to see the t.v. half our living room was taken up by tree. but it was a beautiful, full christmas tree that brought us lots of compliments from those passing by our house.

here is this year's tree all decortated minus the girls' new ornaments for the year. we're still waiting on molly's to come. hopefully it will be here tomorrow. we have a wonderful tradition of getting our kids a new ornament every year to build up there collection. my parents did this with me (and still do) and i loved when i had a place of my own to have all my special ornaments. to this day they're still on the tree (many filling in the sides and back, but they're there). molly and sophie are building up quite a collection and it's so fun to see their faces light up as they rediscover their ornaments each year.

 

tonight we watched how the grinch stole christmas (the animated version). this along with charlie brown's christmas, is my favorite christmas movie. we read the book after dinner and i whipped up some green peanut butter grinch cookies. the girls were so excited to watch (and eat). they really enjoyed the movie (and the cookies).

no, sophie didn't eat the entire platter. i removed it after the picture and limited them to two cookies much to their disapproval.

following the grinch was shrek the halls which they were not at all interested in. molly was begging for a grinch craft though so i got on the internet and found this one. make a grinch head, add eyes, mouth, and santa hat and then on the mouth write what you would do to make the grinch grin.

here are the completed grinches. sophie's mouth says, "to make the grinch grin i would dress him like a princess and dance", and molly's says,"...i would tell him stories, kiss him, and make friends with him."

 

 

i think we're going to do some fun gingerbread activities next. stay tuned....