The Tree!!

We got our tree on Sunday. Papa and I went on a walk-a-bout on the place and found one we both liked. We cut it to size and surprised the kids with it. Here they are with a ornament to place on the tree.

Christmas Crafts and Cookies

For some odd reason the Christmas season insists that you craft. I'm not sure why it does but it does. And I love it. Crafting with kids is fun. Crafting with BOYS is funner yet. The other day we did Paper Christmas trees and E got to make a pipe cleaner bracelet. Today we painted hanging ornaments for the tree. J had a bear, L had a star, and I had a moose. E got to color and Baby R was locked in her chair with a gingerbread "Mary" (the men are Joesph) as the kids call gingerbread woman. Christmas time also calls for cookie making and decorating and we made cookies last week and we were hoping to decorate them this week but we didn't have water for part of it and the week is getting away from us. Anyway. L wanted his star to be yellow so I got him a paper plate and put a little paint on it and off he went. J wanted brown for his bear and so we all started to paint. L covers about half of his star (the middle half :) And wanted another color, green. So green goes on top of the yellow. Still looks cool. Then J wanted red for his hearts under the bear. Fine. Great. I like how he paints. L perks up (painting so far for him is a tad boring but all these colors are fun) "I want red too." OK. No surprise there. "I want BLOOD!! I want blood on my star!" Then the two of them proceed to have a talk about how stars don't bleed so maybe the star was butchering something, chickens or maybe bears or something, and got covered in blood?? I just closed my ears after that and hoped L would want another color to cover the BLOOD. I'm still shaking my head. I've crafted, being a girl, with girls for years. Blood doesn't come up. EVER. It's like a taboo topic. But a Christmas craft with my boys and here we are having a, what they consider, perfectly normal and fine conversation about blood on their Christmas ornaments. He did pick another color and another and another and the blood got pretty much covered up but in the end his star was red but blood was not mentioned. We all had a great time. E actually colored 2 sides of her page from the coloring book quite well which is neat and we'll have to start coloring more. The boys have never been really interested in coloring but maybe with E coloring they will too. J did an awesome job on his bear and it is brown with blue eyes with a pink scarf and hat and red hearts hanging under it.