Snips, snails and puppy dog tails

Merry Christmas

...and thanks to all of you who didn't send out a mass "Merry xmas" text. I appreciate your thought NOT to do it.

Much love to all of my friends and family, and I promise next year I'll send cards.

First Christmas

I flew to Boulder for a quick weekend trip to see Tyler and his family. We celebrated Christmas on Saturday, and now we just have two more Christmas' to go (one on Dec. 25 here and another with my family in January).

The trip was great and Mazie James was the star of the weekend. She's grown so much since I last saw her, and I can't wait to see her again in May.



The Dickinsons

Winter morning

Holiday biological baking timers

Tara and I decided to bake Christmas cookies this weekend. When I told my co-worker Adam what we were doing, he said that every woman has a need to bake Christmas cookies. He said a biological baking timer goes off in December and all the women suddenly feel an urge to bake Christmas cookies.

That fact could be debatable, but since I am one of those women (along with Tara) who has that timer set off every holiday season I could not find any good points to argue with.

On Sunday Tara came over and we baked up dozens of cookies. We ran out of green sprinkles, but the lack of sprinkles led to a creative Christmas cookie breakthrough thanks to the help of green food coloring. We dyed some of the dough green for the Christmas tree shaped cookies. Now we're excited to dye the dough more colors next Christmas...

Christmas tree hunting

Tyler had never cut down a Christmas tree before, so we bought a permit from the Forest Service and went hunting for one this weekend. We thought it was good timing because my dad was in town and he had a pick-up truck to haul it.

We ventured out into the woods and Tyler picked out a beautiful tree, but it was a big one. When we put it in the long-bed truck it hung out the back end.

To fit the tree in the house, we had to take out the window panes. We slid most of it through, but then we realized the trunk was too thick for the tree stand. The boys had to have an impromptu power saw session to make it fit.

The tree didn't win in the end, and it is gorgeous. Dad said Tyler will have a tough time topping this tree next Christmas.

Under the Mo' in action