PreChristmas

 By Christmastime, I finally figured out a holiday treat that Natalie is capable of really helping me make without me going crazy: rolo pretzels. She could unwrap the rolos and set them each on a pretzel, then I baked them and pressed on the top pretzel.

We made pretty good cookie plates this year: sugar cookies, ginger chews, snickerdoodles, pb chocolate no bakes, banana bread, rice krispie treats with mini m&m topping and oatmeal cookies with cranberries and while chocolate. We took some around to our neighbors and it was a good way to introduce ourselves. We have some interesting folks across the road- one guy is an italian exhibitionist with lots of guns and the other is a born-again Christian who told us that all muslims are evil. There is a family two doors down with a three-year-old daughter, so hopefully we'll get to know them better.

 And, it wouldn't be Christmas without LeAnn's shrimp dip at least once.

The weekend before Christmas we got to watch our next-door-neighbor's chickens while he was out f town. I took the girls over to throw them bread almost every day and they loved it. Natalie tried to become one of them.

They were molting, so we didn't get too many eggs, but we enjoyed the few that we did find!

Temperatures have continued to be in the 80's, hotter than normal even for here. So, we went to the beach on Christmas eve.

Then we came home and got into our Christmas jammies

Opened a package from Aunt Marian with an ornament to remember our Uncle Joe who passed away this year

We read the story of Christ's birth and got out each figurine to our new nativity set as we told the story. I think it would make a fun tradition to do this every Christmas eve and collect more and more nativity sets over the years.

Then, the girls each helped themselves to a cookie and set out the rest for Santa