Welcome to Pendleton Manor: Christmastime Festivities

We haven't started doing a ton of yearly traditions yet because our family's still small and our kids are still young, but Christmas is still one of my favorite times of the year.

Growing up, we always had a freshly cut tree in our home. Most years, my family would get a tree cutting permit and would go tromping through the snow and wilderness to find out perfect tree. It was always a lot of fun and I have some fond memories of that. I've realized as I've bought my own tree that a fake tree is, over the years, cheaper and involves much less clean up in the form of dead pine needles. Last year we decided to get another real tree and then get a fake one the day or so after Christmas when they were on sale for a good price. Someone in our ward had one they were getting rid of, though, so we took that one (you have to love free!) and we've used it for the past two years. I do love the real ones, though, and I'm sure throughout the years will have real as well as fake ones. One of my good friends goes Christmas tree hunting with her family so I think maybe we'll do that with her next year. :)

This year we put our tree up at the beginning of this month but we didn't actually decorate it until about a week & a half into the month. Steven was pretty excited about it this year and really enjoyed helping us decorate. We showed him some of Josh's ornaments he'd gotten throughout the years and also Steven's that we've gotten him. He thought that was really cool and you can defintely tell he helped us because there are quite a few ornaments on the lowest branches.

Every year throughout my childhood, my mom would bake gingerbread and we would make gingerbread houses. My mother, being the artist that she is, made pretty elaborate houses & the process would take several hours. She had a few different patterns to make different sized houses, including one for a cathedral. Before baking the gingerbread, she would cut out the windows. After baking them, she would put crushed up jolly ranchers in the windows and put it back in the oven to melt them and voila! stained glass windows! She would even melt sugar to use as glue to hold the houses together. My mother was not fooling around with these things ;) Last year my mom made a bunch of gingerbread houses and sent them to all her kids for Christmas. It was really cool to get that! We didn't end up making ours last year, and it just so happened that my sister, Ginelle, hadn't either, so we got together to make them this year. We didn't get crazy and use melted sugar, though. We ended up using a glue gun which is way faster and not quite so dangerous. Plus, really, who eats those gingerbread houses when Christmas is over?? It was lots of fun to be together and the kids had a great time. Steven didn't even need any direction on what to do! I just had him come in the room, he got up on the chair and started putting candy on the roof. It must be innate...You see a frosted roof, you put candy on it ;)

Yesterday Josh and I took the kids up to Temple Square for the first time since Steven was born. We met up with my brother, Dave, and his wife as well as my sister-in-law's brother and family. Some of our friends from our ward met us up there a little later. It was really fun to go out and see the lights. There weren't as many as I remember but it was still really pretty. It wasn't very cold, either (except when the wind picked up), so that made it even better!
I put Sofia under the tree so she could see all the lights & ornaments