Christmas Cookies-YUM

Megan and I decided to bake and decorate cookies. We figured we'd make gingerbread men and decorate them. Good idea,

to a LOOOOOOOOOOOOTTT of people. We couldn't find any molasses. Two stores we tried were out. So, I cheated and got a Betty Crocker box mix. If you scratch the box, does that count as them being from scratch???? Then we discovered our gingerbread guy had ran away-never have been able to find him. So we decorated the circles the way we wanted too. Can you pick mine out from Megan's? I made the smiley face for you Amy D.-there's your raspberry. As we were decorating, Cookie decided she needed to investigate the situation. We decided as we were cleaning up that we had missed one of the "cookies." So we decided to decorate her too-she thought she was mighty tasty or at least that green frosting was. :o)

Charlie and his choo-choo train

Here's the picture that got deleted from the 1st post about the tree. Phillip (Charlie) is playing with our Christmas train that goes around the tree. You'd think he was a four year old with a new hot wheels. Amy send Jackson down here so my husband can have a playmate.

I guess I am finally done, after three posts, with the adventure of Charlie and his Christmas tree. Hopefully, everyone can piece it all together.

UPDATE to the last post

Something really weird happened before I could finish my last post and edit it. So yes there is a typo/mispelled word and the post is incomplete. But I couldn't get the crazy thing to let me fix it. So anyway, here are a couple more pics of our adventure that night.

Creative aren't they? They are trying to put a pair of chipmunks on the top of the tree. My sister gave them to us on our 1st anniversary. Needless to say, I was hiding where it was safe-behind the camera and across the room.
You got to give them credit. They are creative about a solution.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! The tree is decorated and the chipmunks have their resting place at the top. No accidents, no injuries. What more can you ask/pray for??!!! Aren't they cute?

Charlie's Christmas Tree

We've probably all seen Charlie Brown's Christmas tree on the Peanuts cartoons. Remember how pitiful it looked. Well, just before Phil and I got married, he decided to buy us a little Christmas tree of our own since we got married Dec. 20th. Needless to say, K-mart would not have been my first choice to shop for one, much less would I had even gave that tree a second look and I definitely would not have bought it. But then again, after almost 16 years, I'm not him and we are so different on so many things. I was stuck with that scrawny tree for two years because he kept petting/pampering it while I wanted to chuck it out in the yard. Finally, I was blessed and it died. I said all this for the reason of the pics below. As you can see, we went as a family to pick out a real life Christmas tree. Megan and I had been hopes and aspirations. We all never realized that we would have the two foot root ball that we would have to accomodate for since we want to plant it in our yard afterwards. I guess you could say the little 2' tree Charlie brought home back in 1992 had some serious Miracle Gro issues. My tree now touches our ceiling and the girth is about 5'. I can't wait to see how pretty it will be in the front yard considering I have planted twelve CO blue spruces twice in our yard and they ain't gonna grow here. Maybe subconciously the reason why this one wound up so big. They also gave us a $15 discount. We wondered why, because it was so prettier and bigger than the others. After wrestling to get it in the house, cutting off a few branches at the top, working to get the root ball in a big enough container, we aren't wondering why the discount anymore. Who else would buy such a huge tree???

Here's Phil and Megan beginning the decorating around 10pm. (It took about an hour and a half to wrestle that tree so it would be stablelized.)

Charlie now decides it time to take a break from decorating and play with the train. Isn't he too cute with his little toy

SNOW IN THE SOUTH

Can you believe it?? We got our first snow of the season. I love living at our new home. It's at a higher elevation than the parsonage is. This makes about 5 times that it has snowed here in about 1 1/2 years. Quit laughing Amy Dyer. For it to snow in AL, that's a big thing no matter how little it may be. At least we aren't having to deal with it day in and day out. It comes; it's pretty; fun to play in; and thankfully melts soon.

I did manage to get a pics of Phillip's and my four generations. So I thought I'd show those to everyone. We are so proud and thankful that we are able to still have our parents and grandparents alive and able to visit us recently. I believe Megan takes on more of the Deitz traits than the Pratts though.

And I had to include this shot of my lab. As you can see Megan decided to "torture"/play with her by putting Build A Bear clothes on her. Needless to say, for a 90 something pound lab, she can only wear the hat and shoes.