Some Christmas traditions

Someone's birthday is this month. We get our traditional Mrs. Backers cake for each family member's birthday. Since moi's birthday was on a Sunday this year, we headed to SL on Saturday to pick up this beauty! The kids (traditionally) get a gingerbread girl or boy cookie every time we go. I thought this was really fun until this time...when the prices were posted and EACH cookie is $3.95!!!! Holy Moly! We still let them get one, but they had to eat all of it this time! :) We also went to Western Nut to pick up some chocolate covered gummy bears for a couple of friend gifts. I had never been in that store and it's quite huge! I found divinity that I bought for my Dad since I remember him eating Grandma Hook's every Christmas. Mike did one of his college projects on the Western Nut Co. I'm sure he felt like he was coming home-ha, ha!

The family 'surprised' me with a wonderful breakfast in bed! Mike makes the best omlets and the girls made sure I had cute cards! (Mikey is taking me to Market Street tonight to celebrate!)

We usually do gingerbread houses...this year, we did just one and shared it. They all did pretty well with it. But, I didn't get a picture before they started eating the candy off! After about a week...I threw the poor house in the garbage!

We also attended the Arveseth Family Christmas party at Sizzler this year (wow...a new venue!) It's fun to get together with this side of the family! We are, by far, the biggest family of Jim's siblings, but we love seeing the cousins and catching up. My favorite story of the night was when Mike & Doug were talking to Grandma-Great and asking if we could all visit her sometime (at separate times of course) and she said, 'I'm not into visitors anymore.'

Chalk it up to being 93 years old! We know she still loves us and yes, we did go visit her on Christmas!

We made sure to make our cookies for Santa! I tried a cream cheese sugar cookie recipe this year, but it wasn't that great. The kids decorated them when we got home from Gibby Christmas Eve and they were quite lovely. Santa loved them. Again, I was lame and didn't get a picture of the finished product!

But I did get a picture of our beautiful children!!!!