Christmas Ready

We are ready for Christmas! The kids have done all the necessary prep work... making cookies, decorating a gingerbread house, visiting Santa... and now they can't wait for the big day! Cayden asks every day how many days are left and anxiously inspects the presents under the tree. Laura just wants to open the presents. She's a pro. And Grace, well, she has no idea what is going on. We are excited to have Chad off of work for a week and a half (Christmas Eve through New Year's Day) and to be able to spend lots of time as a family. I'm hoping for a happy, no sick kids, fun filled day. A little fresh snow to cover up all the brown yucky snow would be nice too. :)

Decorating cookies. We use the highly skilled techniques of dumping and spreading with your finger.

Love the pile of sprinkles. This was mild compared to the other cookies. Guess that's what happens when daddy oversees the decorating rather than mommy.

Cute kids with their completed sugar cookies blobs. I used super cute cookie cutters with all these intricate designs which quickly disappeared once cooked. You couldn't tell Santa from the gingerbread man. Thankfully, the kids didn't care and we weren't planning on passing them out to neighbors. :)

Sampling the goods.

Caught in the act!

So happy about that sugar cookie!

So proud of their gingerbread house! It was really hard for me to let the kids decorate the gingerbread house how they wanted. Maybe next year I'll have to do two - one for me and one for the kids.

Visiting the big man and explaining in great detail what he wants.

Cute girl willingly jumped onto Santa's lap this time. Totally caught us off guard since when we took her to the mall Santa she took one look and ran off crying. Nutcase.

Grace could have cared less and slept through the whole visit.