Christmas Traditions

This Christmas is just a little different from others. My daughter and her two girls have moved in with me while their home is being built. The situation is a little challenging since my home is small, but we are doing just fine. Each Christmas, we always take time to decorate the "gumdrop tree". This year my grand daughter, Abbe, helped me. She thought this was totally cool. I had a tough time finding the red and green gum drop treats. After three stores and no success, I decided to check out the really large specialty store, Albertsons. They have always come through when there was a certain something I was in need of. There they were, Brach's yummy green and red gum drops. A Christmas tradition is important. Making memories is well worth the hunt for the needed ingredient.
This year, we let the children wrap the family gifts.  They were eager to learn and actually worked together well to get the job done. The grandchildren even enjoyed making and baking yummy Christmas cookies.  Again, they worked well together.  Licking fingers is just part of the deal.  When all cookies were done, it was a fight to see who got to lick the bowl.  Plenty left in bowl on purpose, of course and plenty to share.  More memories captured in pictures.  Please don't forget to pull out your camera this Christmas.  Capture all of those precious Christmas memories as they happen.
We had a surprise this year.  Got about two inches of snow on the 4th of December.  My grandchildren were so excited.  The snow fell in late evening and was not promised to be around long the next morning, so a snowman had to be built in the dark.  They completed the dirty 6 ft. wonder at 9:00 p.m.  We labeled him the "Mardi Gras Dude".  The children started with small balls of snow way back in the yard and rolled to the front yard to get the size snowball they needed.  In their excitement they realized they had four big balls of grassy snow, thus a 6 ft. guy.  They constructed ramps of different heights to roll the huge balls of snow up to create their masterpiece.  Our frosty lasted from Friday night through Sunday.  The site looked a little strange when there was no snow on the ground and the temperature outside was in the mid 50s.  The morning after the snowfall, we got dressed for our annual family trip to Christmas shop.  Oh, what a joy it was to go shopping with the white stuff covering everything.  Pine and spruce trees along the drive were glorious with the snow on the boughs.   You have to understand that this is something we don't see or experience much.  When we do, it is so exciting.  Enjoy the pics.