decorating the tree

Well, it took us a while but we finally decorated our Christmas tree.

I start listening to Christmas music in October and I always like to get my tree up and decorated the day after Thanksgiving.  We kept meaning to every day but life with a newborn is much slower and unpredictable.  Finally, I said to Dave last night, "Let's just decorate the tree tonight after Katelyn is in bed."  I thought it would just be much simpler and we could surprise her with a beautifully lit tree in the morning.

Dave had a different idea.

So, against my better judgement, I decided we could pull out the decorations tonight as soon as he got home from work.  That was another thing.  I wanted to opt for simplicity this year.  I announced that we would only get out the tree and our stockings, nothing else.  Dave convinced me to get out nearly everything else.  Every time I would tell him to put something back into storage, he would find a place for it out in the living room or kitchen.

He didn't even complain about "fluffing the tree" which is his least favorite Christmas chore.

Well, it turns out he was right.  Kate LOVED being a part of the decorating process.  She carefully helped unpack things and waited for instructions as to where they belonged.  When she ran out of things to do, she just started chanting the word "Christmas" over and over again.  It was pretty adorable.

When it came time to actually put ornaments on the tree, she would pick up each one, hand it to Dave or me, and then point to where she wanted it to go.  We had a lot of similar ornaments clustered together but I think that really gives a tree character.  Also, I may have moved things around when she wasn't looking.

Careful ornament placement takes some serious thought.

This girls loves her silly faces.

Kate wasn't entirely sure what the tree skirt was for.  She decided that it would look best around her neck like some sort of fancy collar.  Who knows.  Maybe tree skirt collar is the next ugly Christmas sweater.

Before Dave had even finished "fluffing" the tree, Kate was getting super excited about the star.  She kept walking around with it and talking about the star and asking for help to put it on the tree.  She tried just setting it in the branches a few times but with no success.  When it was finally time to put the star on the top of the tree, Dave lifted her up to let her do it.  It was obvious she thought she was pretty grown up.

At the end of the night, we turned out all the lights and sat down on the couch to enjoy the beautiful decorations and capture the moment with some family selfies.  In the end, I'm glad we got everything out even if I will constantly be picking up ornaments.  This was such a fun night.

eggies! (part two)

The Easter Bunny hopped right through our house tonight!

Dave is so kind to humor me when it comes to family "traditions."  In October, he puts on a brave face and scoops out pumpkin guts to carve a jack-o-lantern.  At Christmastime he dutifully puts sprinkles on frosted cookies as I forbid him from eating any. (They are for lunches). And in the Spring, he dyes Easter eggs.

This year we got a big carried away and dyed an entire carton of eighteen eggs!  At first I only boiled nine.  Dave asked if that was it.  He told me he would eat at least five tonight. (He has yet to eat one.  I think his eyes were bigger than his stomach.)

We might be eating a lot of egg salad in the near future.

Dave has some pretty creative egg dying techniques.  He loves to use candle wax to create a spotted effect.  They turned out very pretty.

Here are Dave's favorite eggs...

 

...and my favorites.

 

...a Winn family tradition.  "Meg's Egg and Jack's Crack...

...and a breakfast surprise for Katelyn tomorrow morning. :)

 

Happy Christmas!

I had a wonderful Christmas.  I had such a wonderful Christmas that there are only a few pictures to blog with.  After we had all stuffed ourselves with chili and tamales, I realized that no one had taken a picture of all the delicious food.  Once we had participated in the Christmas Eve snowball competition (eating a ball of ice cream with a lit candle on top without putting it out), I again realized that there were no pictures.  We ate a delicious Christmas morning breakfast with cinnamon rolls, fresh fruit, scones, and yogurt and took absolutely no pictures.  We spent the day relaxing at home and there is no photographic documentation.

Instead, I spent the Christmas weekend laughing with my family, making memories with D, and hugging my precious baby.  I had such a great time, I just forgot the pictures.  And I don't even care.

My mom, however, managed to get a few shots to record the celebratory events of the Christmas holiday.

cookie monsters

One of my favorite Christmas traditions as a kid was making Christmas cookies.  I think it was one of my mom's least favorite traditions.  I'm not sure why she wasn't fond of three children in her kitchen with flour, icing, food coloring, and sprinkles.

I always looked forward to Christmas cookie day.  I would think about it at school and wait impatiently for the evening of decorating cookies.  I loved listening to Christmas music with my family and sneaking bites of cookie dough when my mom wasn't looking.  I enjoyed choosing brightly colored sprinkles to liven up the frosted sugar cookies with and during the clean up process, eat spoon fulls of leftover frosting. (Again, when my mom wasn't looking.)  When my siblings and I were teenagers, our favorite part of Christmas cookies was using a non Christmas themed cookie cutter like a duck to tease my mom with.  Christmas cookie night was always a happy day.

As an adult, I still love Christmas cookie time.  It is a sugary reminder that Christmas will soon be here. :)

Christmas Eve part one

Last weekend, we celebrated half of Christmas Eve.  My uncle David and his family were off to California for the holidays and my brother Jack and his wife don't arrive until Friday so my grandma decided to host two wonderful Christmas parties.

This seemed like a great idea to me.  We always have two traditional meals for Christmas Eve and it is always difficult to choose between the two and also difficult to fit in your chair when you choose to eat both.  Having two Christmas Eve parties is the perfect solution.  Of course, I didn't have to cook or decorate or prepare anything.

Katelyn came to the party dressed up as a sugar plum fairy.

My grandma cooked tradition German buterglace (sp?  I'm not sure if any of relatives really knows how to spell this word.) and rivel kucken (this one I googled).  It is delicious!

Katelyn is a true Lauck!  She loved the buter balls and the sweet bread.

My grandparents also hosted a white elephant gift exchange with great prizes.  I guess I was really excited about this one! 

After a white elephant gift exchange and sharing our Christmas memories, we all found some room for dessert: a gingerbread cake, Bluebell ice cream, and GiGi's cupcakes!

We had such a great time at Grandma's house.  I can't wait for Christmas Eve part two! :)

o tannenbaum

Earlier this week, when D and I put the tree up, Kate had already gone to bed.  We figured that this would be the last time to decorate just us together and really, how dextrous is a seventh month old when it comes to ornaments anyway?  The whole time we were decorating though, we kept talking about how much Katelyn would love the Christmas tree.  We just knew she would love it.

"You'll have to spend all day keeping her from pulling down the tree," D would say.

"I know," I would smile, excited to think about keeping her from crawling towards something other than the router.

The next morning, the first thought on my mind was the Christmas tree.  I picked up Kate from her crib and brought her to the tree expecting some grand display of joy.

Nothing.

She looked away.  She didn't even glance at the tree.  I pointed out the shiny and glittered ornaments and squirmed toward the other direction.  I turned the twinkly white lights on and she just stared back at me like I was boring her.  Dejected, I spent the rest of the day watching choose the stupid router over the glorious Christmas tree.

This morning, we resumed our daily routine.  Kate would play with an object from the approved list of toys to chew on and hit.  She would wait until I looked the other direction and start her surprisingly fast army crawl towards the router on the bookshelf.  I would watch her amble over out of the corner of my eye.  She would sometimes get far enough to pull a book off the bookshelf.  I would pick her up and deposit her on the other side of the room while she laughed and screamed all the way.

It was in the middle of one of these rotations that I watched her stop dead in her tracks, shoot a look at the Christmas tree, and quickly revise her travel plans to include a holiday themed destination.

Needless to say, I was overjoyed.  I quickly grabbed my camera, plugged in the lights, and sat down to enjoy the tree with Katelyn.  Of course, her favorite thing was to pull down ornaments which is why I bought plastic ones.

Some of the decorations tasted better than others.

Inevitably, she got jealous that the tree was wearing a fancy skirt and she wasn't.

So I let her try it on. :)

over the river and through the woods

Now that they have had some time to settle in from their travels, Poppy and Kiki invited the family over for Sunday dinner.

Katelyn modeled the new bows that Kiki brought back from Utah.

Grandma's family dinner's are legendary in our family.  Over the years, they have been the cause of diet failures.  Even if Grandma tells you that she is just doing something simple, you can expect a beautiful table setting, excellent food, and multiple options for dessert.

Tonight's dessert was apple crisp.  We were all sitting around, talking and laughing and eating our sweet apple goodness while poor Katelyn just started intently.  My mom was holding her so she scraped off the sugary crisp, mashed up one of the apples, and gave little Kate a taste.

It turns out Katelyn loves apples!  I think she might like them as much as bananas.  We couldn't feed them to her fast enough.

My grandma mentioned that she had a baby spoon we could use.  I assumed she meant a spoon leftover from when my cousin Dallas was a baby but she came back with a beautiful silver spoon.  It was the spoon she used to feed my mom and her siblings.

We had a great time at Kiki's this afternoon and it will be the first of many family gathering for Baby K I'm sure.