It's Christmas Time Again...

This year I've tried to keep Christmas low-key, while still keeping lots of the traditions we always do. I like feeling less busy & stressed and not feeling like we have to do something Christmas-y every day! The first of December, we went to see Santa in the morning & then went to decorate cookies at church with some friends.

On the day Santa comes into town, there's always several things around town to walk around and do for free. A local church opens up for crafts, cookies & hot cocoa.

There's Christmas character cut-outs.

And one of the main reasons we put up with the crowds and the cold and the madness is for horse-drawn carriage rides. It's only about a 5-10 minute ride, but /Leah is super into horses this year, so she was in heaven!

And finally we got to see the big guy. I didn't really have any expectations that Jacob would do well, and I'm glad, because he certainly wanted nothing to do with it. I did not however expect Abigail to be equally as upset or anxious about sitting with him. We forced them both on him anyway for a photo to remember in years to come!

We always enjoy going to Cookie Decorating Day at church because they have fancy colored glazes & sprinkles for decorating that we don't have at home. We get to eat some of the cookies, and leave some for the workers at the nursing home where we go caroling later in the week.

Jacob wasn't really interested in making any cookies, but was perfectly content to sit here in his chair with a bowl & a rolling pin for quite awhile. Then he started running around and eating all the sugar cookie dough he could find.