Family Christmas party and cookie baking!

Thursday was a busy day for us as well since it was my birthday, Ben's holiday performance, Sam's holiday performance, and both Will and Ben had their school parties that day as well. Brian and I both went to watch Ben sing (he was so adorable!) then went to help out at his party. After that, Brian went to watch Sammy sing at his school while I picked Ben up from school. I'm the room mom in Will's class so I went to his school in the afternoon and gave the kids their holiday party. We played Bingo, decorated sugar cookies, played pin the nose on the snowman, made a reindeer candy cane craft, and of course, ate junk food! That night, we went to an Italian place to celebrate my 31st birthday. All in all, a great day.

Our annual Leonard family Christmas party was Sat. and we all had a great time visiting with family and friends. Santa came, the kids did lots of fun crafts, and best of all, got to play with all of their cousins.

Today is Christmas Eve and we spent the morning making cookies for the big guy. Santa that is!The kids did the ones decorated with sugar by themselves and I did the ones that are iced. The kids ate the last chocolate in their chocolate advent calenders and are so excited about tomorrow!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

We have really been getting into the Christmas spirit here at the Leonard house. We have our (fake) tree up and decorated. We are talking about getting a real one next year. We have garlands and wreaths hung. We have a rudolph car costume on my van. We watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation with the kids last night (had to fast forward through a little bit of it, but the kids thought it was hilarious!) As I type this, the men folk (except for the one napping in his crib) are all outside stringing Christmas lights and putting up the light up train that they bought for outside. I wanted to go all out this year! We got the big, old school colored lights too because Christmas decorations are SUPPOSED to be gaudy, people!

This morning we put on some Christmas music and decorated a gingerbread tree and nativity scene. Last night we baked decorated cutout cookies and will do some more later on. I tried a new recipe, but nothing beats the old recipe my mom used to use. The cookies are light and crispy and lemony, a little different from traditonal sugar cookies, and nothing quite says "Christmas" to me like those cookies do (kind of like Brian and the Christmas tamales that his family makes every year)! So I will have to make some before Christmas because I have not gone a single year without them in the 9 years since I have been out on my own. I have also made a batch of fudge with more to come, and made homemade peppermint marshmellows. Baking is one of my favorite things about the holidays.

I love family traditions and it's really important to me that we create our own with our kids so that they have things to look forward to, that we only do around this time of year. One that happened sort of by accident, is that we go out on Christmas Eve and look at lights, then we come home and eat take out Chinese food. Then we put out milk and cookies for Santa, read The Night Before Christmas, put the kids to bed, then wait for Santa. I like having a quiet, laid back evening before all the craziness of the next day.

I hope all of you are having a magical holiday season and enjoying your own family traditions!