Christmas Cookies

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is decorating gingerbread cookies to hang on the tree. Our grandkids were willling helpers in the decorating process.

This year everyone could decorate without too much help and they made wonderful cookies.

And now our tree decorating is complete and it looks like Christmas.

Finding the perfect tree 2020

 We once again enjoyed a family outing to find the perfect Christmas tree. This was not a Smith family tradition or a Roehr family tradition, but started with our own family. Over the years the outing has changed, the family has grown up and we have become very efficient in the hunt, but it is still a great outing on a sunny winter day.

Calvin and I arrived first and had already chopped our tree before the rest of the gang arrived about 10 minutes later. This is a fake photo of me with the axe. It was heavier than the one we usually use and I couldn't actually swing it at the tree, so Calvin had to chop it all by himself.

The other families were just as efficient, but no one got a tree quite as big as ours.

Just for comparison, this is our first Christmas tree in 1976

And this is our tree in 2020