O Fir Tree

We lit the third candle on our wreath yesterday, which means Advent is more than halfway over and we can really start gearing up for Christmas. We had another round of cookie baking at Dema's last week, and with a few extra kids on hand, got even less done than we did the first round. The kids actually did a great job on a batch of ball cookies. Catherine and Mary rolled out the balls in various interpretations of the correct size, and the rest of the kids coated the dough balls in coconut.

Apparently rolling them was easier on the table than in the bowl.

Daisy was a little too young to succeed at the rolling, but not at all too young to succeed at sneaking a taste!

 After that group effort, we got a little distracted by all the toys and books at Dema's, and I think only Catherine and Mary made it back into the kitchen now and then for the rest of the morning.

We also hunted down a Christmas tree this weekend. We have a fake tree, but it is very large and didn't make the cut for the limited space in the moving trailer, so it's still in the attic on the Cape. So we embraced the whimsy and went back to a real one.

The kids lost interest in choosing the perfect tree the second they decided the rows of trees were running lanes made just for them. See that little blue dot right in the middle of the picture? That's Michael Jr.
And they had a lot of fun popping in and out between the rows.

After they ran a couple miles we got them focused back in on selecting a tree. Daddy let -- actually, made -- each of them try their hand at the saw. Catherine is the only one that managed to get the teeth to bite a bit in the wood, but she quickly tired and switched to holding the lower branches out of the way so Daddy could finish felling our tree.

 

Then he had them drag it back to the wagon since he did all the work sawing.

Ha. Not really. But they did manage to move it a few feet before Daddy stepped in.

Doesn't Mary look right at home on a tractor?

 So now we have a tree in our living room that looked remarkably smaller out in that field. We'll begin to decorate it this week with our O Antiphon ornaments and finish up on Christmas Eve. Yay!