Santa Clause Came to Town!

So on Christmas Eve my husband's grandma and sister-in-law with her two kiddlets Lillie and Clayton came to hangout all day and prepare for Christmas Eve dinner. Later that night Santa was going to come give them a visit!!!

This is pretty much as good as it gets trying to grab a quick picture for my mother-in-law of all the grandkids(besides the two in California)! From left to right: Lillie, Annalise, Clayton, Parker, Connor, and baby Oliver!

Santa was bringing them all pajamas because I thought that would be fun and they would have new pajamas to wear when they opened their presents on Christmas morning. My kids would be thrilled with a pair of socks so I knew they would be happy. Plus I knew if they had toys on Christmas Eve night they would never wind down and go to sleep. 

My in-laws though decided that they needed a toy to play with while they went to the church Christmas Eve candle light service and they kids waited for Santa so there went that plan!!!

Then Santa came a few hours later! Let me just say Oliver has liked and loved ANYONE he has been around. With him he has been to so many Dr. appointments and procedures he is so used to seeing new people and being handled by people he didn't know ect. However when he got anywhere near Santa he would scream and cry like I have never heard him do before! Maybe next year he will like him a bit more!

Santa is here!!!

Auntie Sarah went up to Santa so Ollie could see him and this was his reaction!

Connor and Santa!

Annalise and Santa!

Lillie and Santa!

Parker and Santa!

Clayton and Santa!

Annnnnd Oliver and Santa! Lol

My kiddos sporting their new pajamas!

The fun didn't stop there though!! Oh no then they got to open all of Mimi's presents too!

So needless to say my kids didn't go to sleep till 10:30pm and they were up at 7:20am!

Christmas Tree Cones!

So this year I went to go buy the gingerbread house kits as usual but the kit that has 4 little houses were out. Well I lie they had 4 left but they were all cracked and broken and that just wouldn't work. Buying the individual houses was like $8 a piece and I needed 4 of them. So I decided I would do the Christmas tree cone decorating instead this year because the supplies added up to be under $10 and if the kids wanted they could do more then one tree! 

We always invite our friends Chelsea and Olivia to come make ornaments and gingerbread houses with us so of course they agreed to come over!

All you need are pointy cones, green frosting, and any candy of your choice! I have seen this done with many many different candies. I am picky though so I chose ones that looked Christmasy(is that a word?). I even picked out the skittles that were not Christmas colors. 

I personally decided to frost the cones myself and then gave the kids plates with candies and I let them decorate. However if you have older kids you could let them frost the cones themselves. Just be sure the frosting is on thick so the candies will stick good!

Connor and his beautiful Christmas tree! Connor was pro as he had done this at his class Christmas party the day before. However they got to frost their own trees(he liked to keep reminding me of that).

Parker and his Christmas tree! He was the first one to dig right in!!!

Annalise and her tree even though she was kinda eating them all off as she put them on! Hehe

And little Olivia who was very strategic on where she placed what. She would even remove them off and back on her plate if it wasn't how she liked it.

I think the trees were a lot of fun and I think for now on we will be doing the trees instead of the gingerbread houses!!!

After the beautiful and yummy trees were made we let the kids pick a ornament and color it!

To make the ornaments preheat your oven to 300 degrees.

Mix together 4 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt, and 1 1/2 cups of water. 

Then kneed it and roll out with a rolling pin. I roll mine out thin because when they bake they rise a bit.

Then cut into whatever shapes you would like. I use Christmas cookie cutters.

Then cute a whole at the top where you will hang them.

Then bake for around 30 min.

After the kids got to play for a bit because sitting down and doing projects just builds up their crazy energy so Annalise and Olivia decided to partake into the sport of wrestling!

Frost and...Geese?

Last week was freezing but at the same time it was beautiful with all the frost on the trees and plants! All the trees were just pure white! I decided to take the camera out to take a few pictures of it and in the field next to the house there was like 50 geese. So I decided to take a few pictures of them as well :)

And a few pictures of the frost! I am hoping to upgrade to a much newer camera and some new lenses and one of those being a macro for better close up pictures.