Getting Ready for the Holidays!

Saturday

In the morning, Grandma invited the boys over to make gingerbread houses. Of course Brayton was very particular in decorating his and most of the pictures show Taite licking frosting :~) Apparently the best kit was from Target, if anyone was interested (she'd gotten one from Sam's Club but it wasn't nearly as nice). I sent my camera because I was busy getting ready for my Wildtree tasting party. Good thing Grandpa was available to take the pictures! The houses turned out really cute!

Brayton insisted he wear his apron because he didn't want to get any frosting on his shirt (not that it was special or a good one even ~ he always has been a little non-boyish in that respect! Doesn't like to be dirty) It looks like it's getting a little small, so I might have to make a bigger one for him :~) I don't want him to stop cooking just because he doesn't have an apron that fits!

Sunday

Yesterday I got together with a couple of other moms from Taite's class to prepare a craft the class is going to do for their Christmas party on the 22nd ~ we were there for 4 (YES FOUR!!) hours! I never would've though it would take that long, but it did and we are close to being done, but not quite yet. When I got home, we ate a few bites of sausage, beer bread and headed out to see the Holiday Train! YEAH!!! Since the DM&E was bought by the CP rail, the Holiday Train made it's first stop ever in Rochester! The newspaper said it would arrive at 6 and to come 15 minutes early. . . We arrived at 5:45 to wait in line in the turn lane to watch the train pull in. It was still cool and we could see pretty good. We parked and walked across Hwy 14 (at the light) to see it up close. We dropped off our canned goods and the concert began! We really had no idea what to expect, but they had probably 10 cars decorated with lights and one car had doors that opened and Santa was on stage for just a short time before the band started singing their version of holiday songs (some we recognized and some they had written ~ one was about a train, obviously!) This is a wonderful food drive as everyone is encouraged to bring money or canned goods who comes to see the train, so the food shelf LOVES the CP! I couldn't take very good pictures with my camera, so we took a little video to capture it all. I wanted to get a picture of Taite and Brayton with a freight car in the background, but Taite wasn't up for it. . . he's getting a little too cool, too soon!

Tonight

Brayton came home from school today disappointed in himself. . . He got 2 wrong on his spelling test! Not that I don't want him to strive for the best, but he can't be so upset when he doesn't "land on the moon". Maybe I need to make sure he gets that glass at supper some night (it says something about that shooting for the moon and missing you are still in the stars ~ well, you know what one I'm talking about, right?) I kept telling him he did great ~ he spelled those (thoes) and there (ther) wrong. We'll have to work on that attitude a little ~ it was just on Friday he was asking me what the poster at school meant. It showed two glasses with exactly the same amount of liquid in them with the phrases 1/2 full and 1/2 empty, maybe I'll remind him of that too!

Since I ruined my son's Christmas by forgetting to ask him to help put the decorations on the tree I tried to redeem myself tonight with a little help from my Grandma! This year for the first time in a long time, we are having Christmas at Grandma's again. We used to do this when I was a kid, but every one's families got to be so big and we just quit doing it. So, I thought with everyone coming to Grandma's she'd want her tree up. I told Chris my plan and he said "You know she'll think it's too much work" (I had to agree ~ she normally would!) Boy were we wrong!! Bray and I took her mail in and I asked her if we could put up and decorate her tree. . .all she said was "You'll have to find it and it's upstairs somewhere" and the hunt was on! We found the tree in the first closet I looked in ~ I was EXTREMELY grateful (thank you God!) because you are never sure what you'll find upstairs in the closets at Grandma's house. . .

So, then we had to try and find the ornaments. Grandma had a few downstairs and then she said to check another closet upstairs. At first all I found were receipts and paper stuff and then I found an old fruit box and I remembered digging it out when I was young, so I knew it was the right one. We didn't put every decoration out, but enough so Grandma & Brayton were happy! I think I redeemed myself ;~)

Yes, the tree is crooked, but I tried to straighten it out (Grandma was looking at me kind of funny ~ maybe it wasn't so obvious to her. . .), but couldn't ~ guess it's kind of a Charlie Brown tree :-) A funny thing is the Christmas Goose on the floor below the tree ~ Grandma said that not everyone has a Christmas Goose and she made it herself. There were a couple of geese on the tree too and Brayton said he didn't think anyone had Christmas Geese because he'd never heard of them!!