A week's worth of Holiday goodness

Aunt Becky has been complaining on the lack of updates. Well, we have been busy. Besides dealing with the world's longest lasting cold, we have been preparing for the holidays.

On Monday, Grandma Seibert came down to visit. On Tuesday, we helped her to make some of her Christmas cookies. Helped by licking the spoon.
Another guilty party.

It looks like a hard Candy Christmas, Aunt Becky.

Our friends, Mazie and Jen came on Wednesday and stayed until Friday. We didn't take any pictures of Mazie, but trust us, she was pretty cute. She was also never left alone for more than 5 seconds at our house. While they were here, we went to see the gingerbread houses at Connor Prairie. We need inspiration for next year.

Annalise watched the train for about 30 seconds before running off.

Here's Evie and the most impressive entry. It won 1st place--it was professionally done.


Connor Prairie is kind of like Sauders farm, but instead of hauling in the post office from a local township, they focus on the Connor farm owned by Eli Lilly (who had a daughter named Evelyn!) So everything is farm and pioneer (not the seed company) themed. The girls really enjoyed it. Evie and I are reading LIttle house on the Prairie books right now and it was fun for her to see a real covered wagon just like Laura and Mary rode in. ( Incidently, reading these books as an adult is totally different than reading them as a child. Times were rough out there on the prairie. And that Charles, he was constantly pulling up the roots and moving the family around on a whim. Seriously, Caroline was one supportive wife.)

Here's the future vet riding the tractor over to the sheep pen. At one point, she was carrying around 6 big stuffed sheep--but my batteries died.

Saturday was cold and windy when I went out to help the neighbors decorate the entrance to our subdivison. Cold in Indiana is much different than cold in MN. In MN, you would walk outside and you inhaled the cold. In Indiana, the cold seeps into your bones and you can't shake it as easily. After my deocrating stint, we took the girls to a candy cane hunt. That was a long time to be out in the wind. I just couldn't warm up. I needed a couple of heating pads.

Fortunately, there were two available for me to warm my cold bones up!

Three bugs snug in a rug.

Then we worked on a project to send to Aunt Laura and Uncle JM over in France.

Laura, can we send this to you? One ornery brother.

Evie worked hard on her creation.

Shlee (as she is currently called around here--pronounced just as it looks) works hard on the stamping.

Then on Saturday night, we put on our Pajammies and went out to look at Christmas lights.

They even got to take their blankies along. While out, we discovered this amazing house in a neighboring subburb. These people really loved Christmas because they had their whole house covered Clark Griswald style with LED lights and then programmed the whole display to be in sync with music! There were cars parked up and down the street. It was by far the best use of lights I have seen since the guy at the end of the cul de sac in Stryker decorated his yard and the yards of two of his neighbors (you NWOers know what I'm talking about).

They also "slept" in the car. We had to cut our tour short because SOMEBODY has decided to give up a nap on most days. And we ended up with a lot of whine and no cheese.

Finally, we made our Gingerbread cookies.

Here's the beginning of the rolling of the dough.

Evie cuts the shapes while Shlee practices rolling.

She had the dough pretty thin. her cookies turned out a little rough.

More in process work. All in all, they turned out ok, but not as good as last year. I think they were overcooked by about a minute. Fortunately, the girls don't seem to care. When we get around to decorating them, they will be even more dried out. What lucky teachers they have to receive these gifts from the heart.

And finally, there is one hot blooded kid in this house. She never wears socks and most times, no pants either. If she could have her way, she would just wear an undershirt and underpants. We only can keep her dressed when she is wearing a dress and tights. Look at that big belly.