What an amazing year it has been! We have had so many fun adventures with Mary! She is growing up so quickly. At times it is so hard to believe she is 10 years old and we are celebrating 14 years of marriage. We look forward to this coming year with great anticipation. We hope you have a blessed New Year!
Every Christmas, Mary and I make a cake for to celebrate Jesus' birthday. This year we made a chocolate cake with Andes Mint chips in it. Mary helped me frost it and decorate it.
We always make a homemade pizza on Saturday nights. Since Christmas Eve was on a Saturday this year I made Christmas tree shaped pizzas. It was so fun and we had my sister over for dinner. I think we will make it a Christmas Eve tradition to have tree shaped pizzas along with our Happy Birthday Jesus cake.
The gifts are all ready for the morning, even little Mackie gets a surprise gift of a covered bed. We will see how he likes it in the morning!
We found out this year that the first day of Hanukkah, the 25th of Kislev, fell on Christmas this year. Since the Jewish Day starts at night fall, Christmas Eve was the beginning. So we bought a Hanukkah menorah and we are lighting a candle each night. We read the historical events surrounding the Feast of Dedication and the miracle of the oil of one days supply lasting 8 days until new oil could be prepared for the menorah in the temple.
I put together a video of day 1-4. It starts with a video then several still shots and then a final video. Mary has enjoyed it very much.
Mary and I
have been baking up a storm this last week. We started with fruit and nut bread. We used all real dried fruit and not the candied fruit you buy in the store. I was so pleased to find real dried Kiwi, pineapple, apple, peach, pear and apricots.
The next afternoon we did these 4 things. The cream cheese was for a Cream Cheese icing for the fruit cake.
I added white chocolate and peppermint chips to the top of the fudge.
Today we decorate about 40 Christmas cookies we baked last night. It was a beautiful morning with the sun shining in through the windows. Mary had so much fun decorating them with the different colors of icing and sprinkles.
We made up several plates for neighbors and for people at Rich's work.
Christmas time as been going by quickly! We started out making cards. Mary made all our Christmas cards this year and I added a family newsletter. It is so fun that she likes to do paper crafts with me.
We put the tree up after Thanksgiving and then went to see Disney's new holiday movie, Moana. It was a lot of fun.
It is always so nostalgic putting on the tree ornaments and remembering where they came from. This shot really pulled on my heart strings. This is Mary's first Christmas and then a picture from this summer. My how 10 years go by so quickly and now she is half grown!
Little Mackie got in the Christmas spirit too!
We had a lot of fun making paper snow flakes to put in the window. We have not had snow yet but Mary keeps hoping it will snow before Christmas Day.
We did outdoor lights this year. It was so fun to do some outdoor decorating.
Mary is holding a Christmas gift basket for her piano teacher. She is such a talented lady and she is so good with kids. We just love her!
My Christmas cactus is in it's full glory right now. It is so big that I am going to have to prune it back after it blooms or Rich won't be able to pick it up anymore and bring it into the house for the winter.
Mary had her annual Christmas piano recital. In February she will have taken piano lessons for 3 years. She really enjoys it and I love being able to play with her. I have included a video of her performance. She did really well for getting up in front of a 100 people and play on a piano she was not familiar with. She loves to perform and looks forward to the rectals.
We had a great day with family! Rich made the stuffing and roasted the turkey. I made a pumpkin pie from Mary's Halloween pumpkins and a chocolate pie. We watched the Macy's Day parade in New York while we did the cooking. When it was all done we loaded it up and took it over to the folks house. We had a house full and lots more great food! Mary had fun by making a Mayflower Ship with paper pilgrims. Each person got one with their name on it and then she had each person write on their pilgrim what they were thankful for. She also read the first Thanksgiving story.
