White Christmas

Anna, Matt, and I have had a fun month getting ready for Christmas here in Vienna. We got our tree and decorated it a few weeks ago, went to a holiday concert at our local high school, made Christmas cookies, and made a gingerbread house. Anna helped to decorate the tree. She had trouble putting the ornaments on herself, although she liked picking out the spot for Mom or Dad to put the ornament. After the tree was decorated Matt had me pose for a picture he likes taking every year: me hugging the tree. Although, this year, Anna joined in too:

The holiday concert we attended involved the high school band playing Christmas Carols while the color guard, dressed as different characters, danced around the auditorium. The characters included Big Bird, Cookie Monster, and Elmo. You can imagine how much Anna liked it.

The Christmas cookies we made were cut-out cookies with icing. Anna enjoyed both helping to cut out the cookies and icing them. About half-way into icing them we let her eat a cookie. Obviously up until that point she didn't realize that the item she was icing was edible. Once she ate that one cookie she was done icing because all she wanted to do was each more cookies.

Here are a few pictures making the gingerbread house. We were surprised that she had the patience to place the little candies one by one in the icing. She did a great job and seemed to really enjoy it too.

On Saturday we celebrated Christmas here in Vienna as we are headed up to Albany on Wednesday to celebrate with everyone there. We ended up with a true White Christmas here in Vienna as we got about 20 inches of snow, which from what we have heard is the biggest snow fall here in 30 years. Anna has not been as impressed with the big snow as she was when we just got a few inches. Maybe because I've forced her into this gettup?