Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve we got to spend a lot of time with family...


Aunt Jess...




Aunt Ginny...


Uncle Rob... (Lots of book reading!!)

Who's the cutest little Santa? :)

Dressed up for Christmas Eve Mass...

We forgot to bring the camera to church, but my brother did take a picture of the kids with his phone. I just don't have a copy of these pictures yet :) Hopefully, I'll remember to get them from Dany soon (I'm pretty sure he has a copy).

After Mass, we had our usual Christmas Eve dinner at my grandmother's house.

You can see that Matteo got a black eye to match Ma's :) He had an accidental run-in with his younger sister's head.

More time with Aunt Jess - if you can find her under all those kids!

Christmas Eve hugs with Ma :)

Now onto Christmas morning!

Christmas Cookies with Aunt Pamela

Like everyone else, the Christmas season has been busy around here. I'm way behind on blog posts. I have many, many pictures to post, and hopefully, I'll catch up over the next week.

First of all, I have pictures of Christmas cookie-making with Aunt Pamela on the Tuesday before Christmas.

Firs the kids opened their Christmas gifts from Aunt Pamela - aprons! Very appropriate :)



On to the cookie-making!

We made a wonderful mess and had lots of fun!! Thanks, Aunt Pamela for a wonderful day!

Time with Ma

During our first week in GA, we got to see my grandmother almost everyday. My mother often goes to her house after work to bring her here for supper. Seeing the happiness that the kids bring her reminds us why we make the long trip from PA.

*My grandmother, who suffers from Alzheimer's, recently had a fall, and a medication that she takes makes her bruise very easily, which is why her face is so bruised. She has improved much over the last week, and seeing the kids has helped her along!

Gingerbread House

This weekend the kids and Grandma made a Gingerbread house.

Here is the final creation!

Our Jesse Tree

During Advent we have been making ornaments for a Jesse tree. A Jesse tree and it's ornaments are a way to follow the story of salvation history from the creation of the world through the birth of Christ. Everyday we have learned another part of the story (through Holy Hero's Advent Adventure) and have made an ornament for our tree. The ornaments have a symbol representing a person or event.

Last Advent we made paper ornaments and taped them on a paper tree we made. This year our good friends, the Rosamonds, sent us some nice wood pieces that they cut from a birch log, and we have painted some nice ornaments that we can use year after year. We got a 3 foot tree to hang them on.

Here are some of the ornaments we made. We've added to them as the weeks have passed. We weren't able to bring the tree to GA, but we did bring the ornaments and added them to Grandma's tree so that we can continue the story through the last week of Advent.

We hope you have all had a blessed Advent preparing for the joys of the Christmas season!!

First Snow of the Season

Even a good dusting is exciting at the beginning of the season!

Let the baking begin!

We made some peanut butter cookies with Hershey kisses this afternoon. Yummy!

I did my Thanksgiving grocery shopping this morning, and I can't wait for Thursday! We'll have a pretty simple meal since it'll only be our family, but we're still looking forward to it :)

I hope everyone else is ready to enjoy their holiday!