Gingerbread houses

We like to make little gingerbread houses every year at Christmas time, and this year we were able to invite some new friends over for the event. Sareny's best friend is a little girl named Lisa from her class, and luckily, Lisa's family lives a few streets away from us. That's pretty fortunate when you consider that it takes me about 20 minutes to drive to her school. This year, Daddy helped Isaac make a house, and I helped Sareny. Finley wasn't too concerned that she wasn't making a house, she just wanted to eat much candy as she possibly could.

All of the kids together with their finished projects.
Lisa, Mia, and Brianna.

Isaac, Princess Finney, and Sareny.

We had a great time with Lisa's family and are so glad that Sareny has made such a great friend at school.

Decorate the tree, hang some ornaments, come help me!

We put our Christmas tree up just after Thanksgiving. I love Christmas ornaments, and it seems I have passed that love on to my children. They each have their own box that holds their own special ornaments, and they are so excited each year to bring them out.

One of our favorite traditions is that everybody gets a new ornament at the top of their stocking Christmas morning. It is common knowledge that I put the ornaments there after Santa has already come. This year the girls got sparkling tiara's that represented their princess Halloween costumes. I tried to find a knight for Isaac, but couldn't, so he got an abominable snowmonster instead. (In case you're wondering, I got a tiara too, and Keith got a large diamond-y thing. Okay, both of them were really for me.)

Our tree was pretty loaded up with ornaments on the top, and completely bare on the bottom. Those of you with kids will know exactly why.