Tree Decorating 2014

We put up our tree this weekend. Wesley took over the job of Assistant Assembler from Roz. If Roz would have been here she would have been Main Assembler and I would have just watched. :) We got it put together with the lights and garland on in the afternoon, then after dinner we decorated.

Back in 2011, we came up with a good system to divide the ornaments up by person. We did that again this year. It works out great! I separate all the ornaments into little boxes. Each child gets to hang up their own special ornaments plus several generic ones. They can take their time or speed on through, but once you're box is empty then you are done.

It cracks me up to see what ornaments the kids consider "front worthy" and "back worthy". Although, they do seem to share my opinion of what constitutes a "creepy Santa". Even with taller kids I still end up with a ton on the bottom front. But the old saying "many hands make light work" is true. The tree gets decorated in no time with a big family! The kids do most of the work now. I do hang up some of my special ornaments and Jerry has two or three he puts up himself.

The boys consider themselves tree decoration experts, which I guess they are compared to Annabeth. Here Justus gives Annabeth some advice.

 Eli is a serious tree decorator. He is also very careful with the ornaments that are special to him.

JD thinks every ornament is "front worthy". 

Justus with the ornament I made for him two years ago.

While he was very helpful with tree assembly, Wesley wasn't as into the actual decorating this year.

Annabeth spent most of the time moving this same ornament around. She would put it on and then yank it off and put it somewhere else. Repeat.

Good job everyone, the tree looks great! And no ornaments we broken… a double win!

Thanksgiving 2014

It was just us for Thanksgiving this year. It was a quiet, relaxing day. I did most of the cooking and prep on Wednesday and I'm glad I did. The past couple years I've gotten more organized about holiday planning and it has resulted in less stress for me.

Last year I made this spread sheet and it really helped so I used it again this year. I also made extra copies of all the Thanksgiving recipes and put them in a binder so I don't have to track them all down. I did this with Christmas recipes too. I've found it very helpful.

So Wednesday was spent in the kitchen and Thursday was spent with the family. We started the day with homemade cinnamon rolls and, a bit later, mid-morning Wisconsin style Bloody Marys (virgin for me!).

Then the boys played a little football. The weather cooperated nicely. It has been a bit chilly (by AZ standards) the past week, but it was nice and warm on Thanksgiving morning.

Annabeth and I watched and cheered from the sidelines.

Libby loves playing football so after the boys were done we let her out to play a bit. She lines up and runs after the ball as fast as she can. She almost always gets it first, but if she doesn't, watch out because she'll tackle you to get it!

After a light lunch of cheese and crackers with summer sausage, I set the table and then it was time to take it easy while the turkey cooked. Jerry snuck in a short nap. I did a little online shopping and read (I'm reading Gone with the Wind right now). The boys played with their neighbor friends and took turns on the computer. We tried to do a puzzle, but it just isn't the same when Roz isn't here to help.

When Annabeth got up from her nap we took a short walk. We didn't go far because we actually got too hot. Since none of the boys were around to help, Jerry and I took turns shaking the jar to make butter. If you've never done it, it's so worth it! It's super easy and so delicious. As usual, the turkey was done earlier than expected. (When will I learn?) So we popped the side dishes in the oven to warm up and ate a bit earlier than planned.

We decided to cook the turkey in the oven instead of the Nesco this year. I think it gets too dry in the Nesco even if you cook it upside down. It came out a beautiful golden brown. It was a great batch of rolls this year too. You can see the homemade butter in the background. It's kind of a joke in our family to say things are the "best batch ever" but this year I think most of the food really was! As you can see, we didn't stick to our low carb diet today, but it was worth it.

I better add "take a photo of everyone at the dinner table" to the spreadsheet for next year because I always think that would be a good idea but never actually do it.

Now onto Christmas...

Happy 9th Birthday Hayden!

Hayden entered his last year in single digits on November 20th! We let him choose where to go for dinner on his actual birthday. After thinking about it ALL day he finally decided a buffet of some kind would be best. There really isn't much to choose from in that regard these days so we ended up at Old Country Buffet or as Jerry likes to call it Scarf and Barf.

It ended up Thursday evenings are a good time to go to OCB. It's Kid's Night and kids eat for $.99 including a drink. So we only had to pay for three adult meals and the other 5 ate for $5. Plus there were a few activities and everyone got a balloon to take home too.

Before we left for dinner, we let him open his present from Mom and Dad. A digital camera! He has been asking for one for a very long time.

Saturday evening we had a little birthday party with the extended family. We had a taco/nacho bar followed by cake and ice cream, of course. A few of the family members couldn't make it so we had lots of extra food. We ended up having taco and nachos for dinner and lunch a few times this week.

Here is a little birthday boy collage I made to post on Facebook. This is what I said to go with it:

He is quiet, fiercely independent, and more artistic than all the rest of us put together. Oh and apparently indecisive… he's been trying to decide where to go for dinner all day!  Happy 9th Birthday, Hayden!

Happy Birthday Hayden! We love you!

Meaningful Christmas: Jesse Tree

Hard to believe, especially here in Arizona, but Christmas is just around the corner. If you are looking for a wonderful way to make Christmas meaningful I highly recommend a Jesse Tree. This will be our seventh year doing one and we love it.

You can start with Advent or you can just start on December 1st and go through Christmas Day, which is what we do. Each day we read the Bible and a short devotional then hang an ornament on a little tree. There are many websites out there to give you ideas and there is no right way. Each family does it a bit differently.

There are kits you can buy, but it is easy to just make your own ornaments. They ornaments can be printed on paper or if you get real creative you can buy items to hang as ornaments that are a bit more three dimensional (like a mini-globe, twine, wheat, etc). The tree itself can be a branch that is secured in a pot or you can use a mini-Christmas tree. That is what we do and it works well. There are free online devotionals or Jesse Tree books you can buy.

One of these days I want to try and update my paper ornaments to something like this…

The children really get a lot out of it. I think the review of familiar Bible stories helps them and it reminds us each day about the reason we're celebrating! It also helps the kids understand the Old Testament is just as much about Jesus as the New Testament and makes it very clear that God had everything all planned out long before Jesus was even born!

The first ornament is the stump of a tree, from the verses (Isaiah 11:1-2) A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. We talk about how God can take a tree that has been cut down (dead) and give it the hope of new life through a new shoot (Jesus). Then we'll move onto creation, the fall, Noah, Abraham, etc.

If you are interested, here are some links I found long ago in 2007 (they actually still work!):
Jesse Tree Instructions and Printable Ornaments
Free Devotional 
Another Tree with Printable Ornaments
Yet another option
or search "Jesse Tree" on Google or Pinterest

[Note: This is an edited re-post. I wanted to share it again a few weeks before December so if you're interested in giving this a try you have time to get things printed.]