It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We've been having a fun time decorating the house for Christmas. The other days they made the paper scraps fly as they created paper chains and snowflakes. We hung the chains on the ceiling and then hung the snowflakes from them



Some people wrapped their chains around the tree, while others wrapped them around themselves.



Once they got the hang of how to do it, they really made some pretty snowflakes!



Nate was a chain makin' fool... he turned everything he could find into a paper chain. He'd have stapled his sisters in if they'd have been still long enough.

Deck The Halls...

Last week we decorated the tree for Christmas. This is as good a photo as I can get to show the general chaos level of the house that evening.



This is our friend Al. Decorating a tree just isn't the same without him.



He likes to pick on the kids, and is generally an ornery old coot. We all love him! Every time Anna would hang up a particular two ornaments, when her back was turned he pulled them off and gave them back to me to give to her.



She must have hung the same ones on the tree a good 20 times. Later she said she just thought we had a lot of them! Haha!



Al is one of our favorite people. :)


Here are some more photos of the decoration day:







Oh yeah- we made cookies too. As you can see by the batter on Mercy's cheeks.

A great time was had by all.

Eric brought the Angel home from a trip to Hokkaido when we were stationed in Okinawa.

Just another of our Christmas Traditions - decorating the tree.

And, by the way, don't try to make home made eggnog. Trust me.

I have posted this link at I Heart Faces . Go check out the other (better photographed) traditions!

First Snow

The other day we had our first snow of the season. It was met with shouts of great joy. The jubilation in the Peterson household was without measure. (See the green in the background? That would be grass.)



They played. (The green at the bottom would be more grass.)



They jumped. (Yep... still grass. I could have edited this to only show the snow bouncing up off the trampoline, but I believe in truth in blogging.)



No one tell them that it was a minuscule amount of snow. I like it that way.

What I've Been Up To

Once again, I have bowed to the pressure of "WHY HAVEN'T YOU POSTED ON YOUR BLOG?!?!"

And, "Where are your photos? I love the photos..."

And to my Friend (E.L. to name names...) who asked what I do all day.

Here you go... example one of what I have been doing lately:



We got to let Sam meet his Grandpa.



And charm the socks off his Grandma.



And play with his Big Brother who loves him oh so much...

And really... if you had the opportunity to photograph that smile, wouldn't you do it too? Even if E.L. HAPPENS to shoot with a Canon. I like her anyway. She has a great laugh.

And those pants... aren't they cute? Not to mention the tooshie...



Another of Nate and Sam. Those two are going to be great friends someday. So that, my dear friends, is something of what I have been doing lately.