Category: family

In the middle of the holiday rush of shopping and wrapping and general mayhem, we’re trying to make time for holiday traditions. For as long as I can remember, we have made spritz cookies. An almond-y butter cookie, it always gets shot out of the Super Shooter in the shape of trees, snowmen, or wreaths and then decorated with red hots and other holiday colors.

Neko decorated by haphazardly cramming as many toppings as possible on each cookie, Chris methodically placed each red hot in a particular location, and Shep sat back and ate the toppings while admiring everyone else’s work.

In 2007 I will be publishing my thesis on how one’s personality can be accurately assessed by their cookie decorating.

I was going to get all these amazing shots of the family decorating the Christmas tree. But honestly, in between Shep undecorating the tree almost faster than we could decorate and Neko trying to sneak off with candy canes, there wasn’t too much of a chance. Sometimes kids are just way too wiggly.

So, my children, when you ask where all the picturesque tree-trimming photos are, you only have yourselves to blame. Now please stop lobbing ornaments at one another.

Neko is beyond excited about Christmas this year. Seriously, she’s been talking about it since July. So when she realized it was actually getting a bit closer, thanks to the decorations in every store, she began to get ansty. When were we getting a tree? When would we see Santa? When would there be snow? I have no control over the weather, and I think we’re going to hold out on visiting the big guy until I need an ace up my sleeve…but a tree? That we can do.

We ceremoniously waited until the day after Thanksgiving, and then visited a great tree farm where we found the perfect tree. (We also picked up one for my parents, in case you notice two trees on top of the car.) The hardest part of the day was explaning to Neko that mad-scientist dad insists on soaking the tree for 24 hours in some fire-proofing solution, so we’d have to decorate tomorrow.

Plied with candy canes, we got her to agree. And Shep was just excited to throw the ball ornaments across the room for hours on end.

Photos of the Shellie, Kendall, and Ga by Chris.