|| our Christmas season ||

--Christmas morning and her new broom-broom!!--

Whew! The Christmas season has come and gone.  Every year, I say I'm going to make it a slow Christmas season.  To which all normal mothers promptly roll their eyes and say, "yah. right.".  

So what do we do here?  Are there Christmas activities?  Are there decorations?

Answers:  Lots.  Yes.  And, pretty much depends on where you are.  

If you live in the capitol city, there's a larger variety of Christmas things to do.  And there's beautiful decorations in the malls.  A huge win-win for this Northern girl!  I looooove going shopping at Christmas time.  And the week we went, the crowds were not too bad.  It was great!

For decorations, Leon insisted on a real Christmas tree this year.  The closest we could get to a fir tree is a small cyprus.  We are going to pot it in a large cement pot and every year, haul it inside.  It was a little bit of a wonky Charlie Brown tree.  I was less than thrilled until a week before Christmas, Leon rearranged the lights and a few other aspects of the tree and it became cuter.  I think my Mom has sent new Christmas decorations every year which is amazing!  My collection is growing.  

We received barrels at the beginning of December.  

Barrels any time of the year is amazing but at Christmas it is doubly so!!  Thanks, Dad and Mom!!!  It was such a huge treat and LOADED with goodies.  Italian sausage, coffee, spices, gumbo mix (!!!!!!), Hershey's chocolate syrup, presents, Christmas decorations, Christmas cards, more things from my closet that I forgot I had, etc..etc...SUCH  A TREAT!!!

A group of 11 of us ladies did a Christmas cookie exchange.  The lady who organized it said we must each bring 500 grams of cookies for each lady.  So that was 5 kilos of cookies to bring and 5 kilos of cookies to take home. 

That doesn't sound like a big deal until.......

.........the electricity starts to do this low voltage business and you can't use the oven.

.........you have decided to make cookies with white chocolate chips and you only have two bags and one dozen cookies is only 400 grams.  

........so you make batch B which is oatmeal cookies.  Upon proceeding to take them out of the oven 2 1/2 hours before the scheduled departure time, they are flatter than flatter than a fritter.  

.......Upon which you absolutely, positively GIVE...UP...!!!

And, not all of the ladies made 500 grams.  I totally did not feel guilty about mine not being 500 grams because E for effort, that's all I'm saying.  

It was a fun group effort, though.  Next year, my SIL and I are combining our efforts.  We had 10 kilos of cookies on this farm (as if we need twenty pounds of cookies around our houses!!).

--excitement running high whilst we wait--

Last fun mention of the Christmas season was the homeschool play we hosted on the farm.  Months prior, I volunteered myself to write and direct the Christmas play.  (Insert:  what was I thinking??!!!?)  But when it was all said and done, the entire experience was a lot of fun.  Lots of work but lots of fun.  

One of the homeschool moms helped me direct the kids.  She was amazing!!

The kids did do-it-however-you-want face masks of a barn animal.  And we told the Christmas story from the perspective of the animals in the barn.  It was quite fun.  Lots of moo-ing and neigh-ing and cluck-ing going on that night!

All in all, December was a great month!  And we are excited about the start of 2016.  Hopefully, lots of fun stories to post in the upcoming months.