Christmas

I love getting Christmas cards in the mail. I decided they would make perfect decorations this year. Our little trees were decorated head to toe with cards by Christmas morning.



It was a perfect white Christmas. Cozy fire, delicious food and I loved watching my family open their gifts.

Stockings

Opening gifts

Special gift from my Aunt; a baking dish that belonged to my  Grandma Alice

French Toast Casserole

• 5 cups bread cubes
  4 eggs
  1 1/2 cups milk
  1/4 cup sugar
  1/4 tsp salt
  1 tsp vanila extract
  1 T butter, softened
  1 tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter an 8x8 inch baking pan.

Line bottom of pan with bread cubes. In a large bowl, beat together eggs, milk, 2 T of sugar, salt and vanilla. Pour egg mixture over bread. Dot with margarine; let stand for 10 min.

Combine remaining 2 T of sugar with 1 tsp cinnamon and sprinkle over the top. Bake in preheated oven about 45 - 50 minutes, until top is golden.

It's great on it's own but you can add syrup, powered sugar or jam topping.

Copper made getting this picture quite difficult

        

 "Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy,
 which shall be to all people."
Luke 2:10

Christmas Eve

We had a delicious turkey dinner at my mom's house on Christmas eve.

 My mom had always wanted to sing some old fashioned Christmas carols around the tree. My aunt is fabulous on the piano.. I can't say as much for our singing voices. It was a lot of fun though and certainly set the Christmas spirit.

Later, down by the fire I told the story of the Christmas orange and we opened our traditional Christmas eve gift of new pajama's.

After a few weeks of no snow, it started snowing on Christmas eve, which made for a very white & magical night. We 'hung our stockings by the chimney with care' and snuggled up on the couch for some Christmas stories before setting out some milk and cookies and heading to bed.

Festival of Trees

Globe Snowmen

I've been taking my kids to the Festival of Trees since they were babies. We carried on the tradition this year. My kids got to watch their uncle Tanner clog on stage, and we visited the gift shop with aunts, uncles, cousins and even their great grandma. And I bought them a scone to carry on the tradition of their late 

Grandma Madsen.

My kids were very excited to see Santa (insert sarcasm here) but they were good sports so I could get a picture of them together. 

I did love walking though all the trees and seeing the different themes. Some are so clever!  These snowmen made out of globes were actually my favorite thing of the night.

  

License Plate tree

Origami tree

Soda tree

"Hope" tree

Train tree

Knight tree

Butterfly tree

Medical supply tree

Mustache tree

Hot Wheels tree

On the way home, we stopped at the Christmas tree lot I used to go to when Ashleigh was a baby. We all got to pet real reindeer. Did you know that reindeer love oranges? I sure didn't.