Early Christmas...

In December, the last day of music lessons with Linda means Christmas surprises...

 

 Marianna got super, cute socks.  (Just wish she'd WEAR them!)

 See the line up of kids playing opposite Linda's Santa?

 This very noisy gun has been banished to the basement.

 Andrew's already reading through his book of knots.

 Hmm, what else do we have here?

 How about these awesome ear muffs?

Fingerless gloves for the hard to please teen...

 and who can resist our little knight?

Best of all, this thoroughly essential grooming kit found a most appreciative,

if rather anonymous,  recipient.

 

A big thank you goes out to Santa Linda and Elf Dan for their thoughtful and generous hearts.

We love you!!

An exceptionally long fishing video...

Joseph and Matt have been out fishing pretty much around the clock on the weekends.  Here's a

" CATCH "

they recorded on Joe's phone.  It's kind of long but they were so proud, I just had to share.

More science...

The question is...what preserves food better?

 Your choices are: 

table salt, baking soda, Epsom salt,

or various combinations of these

three ingredients.

 We placed apple slices in 6 different cups with

our preservatives...

waited 7 days...

 and the winner is...table salt.

(Now the real question is...

did we eat those delicious salt covered apples?

Blech!)

While Mom was gone to Mass...the stuffed animals came out to play.

 

Johnny and The Really, Really Big Icicle

(This was before the big meltdown...40 degrees, here we come!!)

Sheer Happiness!

Here's our totally cool Jesse Tree idea for this year...

Our original Jesse Tree has seen better days (and Francis thought the stand was his own personal play toy).  So I asked Matthew to go out and find a big branch that we could hoist above the window in the dining room...not really thinking through how we were going to keep it up there at the time.  So after nailing and taping and rubber banding (probably not a real word, huh?), we got it to stay just long enough for Dan to arrive home.  At which time it promptly fell to the floor...Dad to the rescue, though.  He placed it on top of the light fixture and now...

we can celebrate Advent in style.

Dan's Birthday

Dan's only request for his birthday this year was to spend time

together as a family. So early that morning, I made

a pumpkin pound cake with the help of some munchkins.

 (What's that saying about men and boys and the size of their toys? 

He just couldn't keep his hands off the mixer!)

 P.S.  Grandma, we're almost out of vanilla!!!!

 People are even known to fight over the stuff around here.

 ANYWAY...back to the birthday.  We had turkey leftovers...

 and everyone who was home that night sat at the table together...

 which made the birthday boy very happy.

And the cake was pretty good, too.