Queen (and Kings) of the Kitchen

I don't know about your family, but ours LOVES to eat around the holidays. So that meant a lot of prep time in the kitchen. Of course, Emerson wanted in on the fun so we found a safe place for her to help out so we could be all hands on deck.

These cheese balls were excited to work some magic in the kitchen...

with Uncle Beau. I know this is a rare sight. Beau normally just eats the food...this time he was cooking with the kids (I forgot what) but they were excited. I love Hunter's napkin dew-rag.

Of course we decorated Christmas cookies. We didn't get to decorate  as many as we expected (one of the dogs ate an entire batch of cookies off the counter) but we had MORE than enough. We should probably thank our K9 friend for saving us the calories.

I think Sawyer enjoyed his cookies.

Very serious.

Lip smacking good!

O Christmas Tree

It's always fun to search for a REAL tree. Back home, in Oregon, there are tree farms everywhere. The kids did a great job and it looked beautiful!

Ho Ho Ho

 I love the excitement on my nephews faces here! This was really Santa's helper...not the real guy. This is really my dad (aka Papa). He got sucked into playing the man in red for the local firefighters kids/grand kids. So we tagged along what ended up being interesting to say the least, but Santa still showed and the kids LOVED it!

Emerson didn't seem to mind. She was clueless that it was Papa...or maybe she had an inkling. Stella was under the weather so she missed out.

 No worries...a couple days later it was off to see the REAL Santa. You know the guy downtown with elves and a REAL beard. Well, Emerson wasn't sure of this guy. He definitely wasn't Papa. And Stella wouldn't even stand near the guy.

 The Hart boys had no problems with Ole Saint Nick. They must know who is charge of the presents. But Santa wanted to hear from everyone so he gave up his "special" chair and viola we have a picture with Santa.

Then all of a sudden it clicked...this is the guy in charge of presents and EVERYONE was loving on Santa and making sure he knew what they wanted and that they were "good" this year.