Traditions

We started a new Turkey Day Tradition this past weekend- my mother-in-law Robin decided that every Thanksgiving the grandkids would decorate Gingerbread Houses. So cute! So we had two teams- Team Holton was made up of my four year old nephew and his mom Holly and Team Emma was made up of me and my sister-in-law Brittany. I didn't think to take any pictures of the work in progress but you can see our finished masterpiece below. It was a blast and I really think Emma will like this once she is older. Holton thought it was great and wanted to eat the house as soon as he was finished with his. I really don't blame him because it smelled wonderful!

The Johnson family is fiercely competitive so we were joking the whole time about who was "winning". Of course we told Holton he won but I think Brittany and I kicked butt in the creativity department due to our outrageous (and slightly scary) gingerbread men and Emma's name on the side of the roof (Brittany's genius idea). But, when it came to neatness Holly's mad 1st grade teacher skills kicked our butts. Her icing was all straight and neat . . . I think Brittany and I were laughing too hard to get it right. Oh well, there's always next year!

We also put up our Christmas decorations this weekend. We're still not completely finished but we did manage to get most of the inside stuff up. And, for the first time ever we are actually putting Christmas lights on the house. I've always decorated the front porch and put a few things in the yard but Jeremy wanted to put lights on the house for Emma because we discovered that she LOVES Christmas lights. Poor guy was outside on the roof yesterday hanging lights in a freezing cold drizzle. That's some love right there.

This was our first experience decorating with a toddler in the house. Needless to say the entire bottom half of our tree is shatterproof balls and ornaments we found at Walmart. I highly recommend them-they are Emma tested and completely unbreakable. It was so funny trying to decorate the tree though because I would hang an ornament and Emma would come right behind me and take it back off and throw it down the hall. It takes a lot of effort to squish this large tree into our narrow living room. Especially now with Emma's collection of toys . . .

Her favorite Christmas decoration so far though is the Christmas Train that I put around the tree each year. See how helpful she is . . .

All in all it was a great weekend and we're so glad to have M back home and back to her usual mischievous self.