Gingerbread castle!

Our family and our good friends are studying Medieval times for history this year.  So my friend Julie did an amazing job setting everything up for the kids to create and decorate a gingerbread castle.  She had planned and prepared all of the pieces, but then left the kids to figure out how to put it all together. 

Aidan didn't really know what what going on, but there was candy involved so he was interested.  He made Nate upset when he ate the gingerbread man Nate was planning to decorate into a soldier.

The finished product was awesome!

Forts, feasts, and wreaths as we prepare for Christmas

Some Christmas card outtakes 

This doesn't really have anything to do with preparing for Christmas, but the kids spent one day in December building a really great fort in the living room.

This part of the fort was Annie's office.  She set it up like Daddy's office and composed a great many letters to everyone in the family during her office hours.A

A new tradition:  celebrating the Feast of Saint Nicholas on December 6.  After skiing, the kids enjoyed candy canes in their hot chocolate.

Then we surprised them with Saint Nicholas gifts.  A puzzle for the big boys and books for the other three.

We get together with a group of Catholic home school families on the First Friday of each month.  After Mass in December, a few of the moms (not me, the Mom who breaks out in a cold sweat at the thought of setting up a craft for large groups of kids) organized various Christmas crafts for the kids.  My kids absolutely love making wreaths and arrangements with greens.  They. LOVE. it.    And they do a beautiful job.  Their creations make our home so festive!

Jakin created our family's Advent wreath.

Catching up/Thanksgiving and Jack's birthday

 It's New Year's Eve.  Our family returned home this evening from our ten days of crazy Christmas traveling.  Everyone in the house is asleep and some in the house are sick.  I'm in my pajamas by the fire.  I expect it's going to be a quiet evening so I'm going to try to catch up on a little bit of what's happened in the past two months since my last post.

My parents spent another Thanksgiving with us.  I'm so glad they've been able to join us these past years.  It's nice to have family here and to also relax.  On the day before Thanksgiving, Jack installed the new island counter top.  Beautiful!  And huge!  The picture above shows that all four adults could have our own work station at the island without being in each other's way at all.  Really nice.

We usually get our Christmas tree on the day after Thanksgiving. 

My parents were very generous to stay with our kids for about 28 hours so that Jack and I could sneak in a quick getaway to celebrate his 40th birthday.  We enjoyed a hike (just the two of us!  I don't think that's happened since we've had children), dinner, a lovely bed and breakfast, Christmas shopping (thank you, Jack!), and time reading in one of our favorite bookstores.  Thank you, Mom and Dad.

Our family celebrated Jack's birthday almost exactly as we celebrated my birthday back in October.  After a family hike, we ordered a pizza, make chocolate pudding cake, and ate both by the fire in the living room.  Jack fell asleep early by the fire and I did some furious Cyber Monday shopping.

I don't take many pictures of adult birthdays, but I had to take this picture of Annie's birthday project for her Dad.