Decorating: Trees, Cupcakes, & Gingerbread Houses

I'm so far behind on this blog! Tomorrow is Christmas and I just finished posting all of our November activities. I thought I would try to squeeze some December activities together instead of posting separately, so here goes:


For the second year in a row we drove to Culpepper and chopped down our tree from Shay's Tree Farm. It was very cold and Zachary was very fussy! Mikie did a great job picking out the perfect White Pine and Daddy got the privilege of carrying it to the car. They had baby bunnies to hold, but neither boy was interested so we just let Mikie eat some cookies and then ate lunch at Ruby Tuesdays before heading home.

Searching for the perfect tree.

We found it! Now Mikie helps cut it down.

Daddy hauls it back to the car.

Mikie takes a picture of the tree & the three of us.

The next day, after church, we added the decorations. Mikie was really excited to unwrap all of the ornaments; however, he lacks the vision of symmetry when it comes to hanging them on the tree. After clustering 5 burgundy balls together on one branch, he exclaimed "They're a family!" Now, for those of you who know my husband really well (or even if you've only just met him...you can tell right away!) you probably know he likes everything in it's orderly place and this was just driving him crazy; so, Mikie's "family" soon got a divorce and the "children" got kicked out of the group to go live on branches of their own.

If you look at the balls hanging on the right side of the tree you'll see Mikie's "family" before judge Daddy signed the divorce papers.

Zachary loved to hang the "ball, balls" and still likes to go look at them and say "ball, balls."

Reading The Legend of the Christmas Tree.

After reading the story, Mikie unwraps the shiny silver box to find the star tree topper inside(just like in the book). I hope to continue this tradition in our family...if I can remember to wrap the star again before reading the story!

Another tradition in our family is to have a Christmas tree in each of the boys' rooms. Since they both have barnyard rooms, the theme of each tree is farm animals.

Mikie unwraps and hangs his "baa baa white sheep". There is also a "baa baa black sheep" and he remembered what he named them from last year! I tell you, the kid has a memory like an elephant!

Mikie puts the red barn on the top of his tree.

Both boys in Mikie's room. I just found the cute John Deere tree skirt this year.

In the two videos below, you can hear Zach get so excited about Mikie's animals. Of course I didn't capture him saying all the animal sounds on video, but I did get him saying baa in the first one and cock-a-doodle-doo in the second one.





Next we move to Zachary's room and decorate his tree.

One of the moms in the MOMS club hosted a gingerbread house decorating playgroup. I was expecting a disaster with my two boys because it was during Zach's nap time and Mikie gets frustrated very easily, but to my surprise, they were WONDERFUL! Zachary played nicely with the other toddlers while I helped Mikie decorate his house. I was so proud of him...his house kept caving in and falling over but he never once threw a fit or got angry! I bet you won't be surprised by what he put on his house for decorations...

Numbers!

He also filled his attic with M&M's and added a candy cane for the North Pole. I really like the chimney.



I needed to make cupcakes for the MOMS club (which I ended up forgetting in the fridge at home) and thought the boys would each like to decorate one.

Mikie added pink M&M's and yellow frosting to his.

Zachary enjoyed the colored sugar as you'll see in the two videos below:

And these are the reindeer cupcakes that I made (and forgot) for the party.