Christmas traditions

Our family has developed a number of Christmas traditions over the years and even though our kids are grown with homes of their own, we still keep a few of the traditions.  We still chop our Christmas tree.  This year we went to Dog Valley, which is a much closer location, but required driving on a muddy slippery road in the beginnings of a snow storm.  We went with Peter and Roque and another couple who are friends of theirs.  I like a fir tree, but we were in a primarily Ponderosa pine forest, so I was not finding a tree I liked.  After about half an hour of tromping through an increasing storm Calvin declared a Ponderosa the tree we were taking.  I grumbled but it looked like the best option. Actually I rather like it now, but it took a while to warm up to it.

You can see that it is a little thin on the branch count.

I went traditional with my attire.

As with all trees, it looks bigger in the house.

Another tradition is decorating gingerbread men. We had gingerbread cookies on our tree when I was growing up and it is a tradition that I enjoy, but not being a very artistic person myself, I try and recruit a little help with the decorating part of the project.

I think we had about 40 cookies, so everyone had to get to work.  As usual friends and in-laws had the best cookies while the rest of us go for a more unusual look.

It was fun to have Katie in town to help this year.

And the good news is that even though the cookies were a little softer than usual, none of them lost their heads jumping off the tree.