December Traditions

I love all our December traditions, from cookie baking and decorating the tree to finding Frosty the Elf each morning and indulging in Jess's peppermint bark.  

Our school holds its annual book fair the second week in December. Teacher readers are featured each night, and I feel lucky that for my boys' kinder year, their teachers volunteered to read. We couldn't wait to hear Ms. Lox read snowman stories!

Captivated!

Another annual tradition is the Houston Symphony's children's Christmas concert. This year the theme was How the Grinch Stole Christmas and as always, it was a phenomenal performance. If you haven't been, you must go!

We saw Santa again!

Box seats with swivel chairs. We felt fancy!

After the concert, our tradition is lunch at Mai's. So good! Then we came home and started baking cookies. We made four different kinds this year: cut-out sugar cookies, gingerbread boys and girls, pecan puffs and Portuguese rivas. Our kitchen was hopping all afternoon! 

Henry is such a good helper in the kitchen.

The big boy didn't want to help cut out cookies, and instead worked on his new Mind Winks workbook (rebus puzzles).  

Will did love decorating the cookies, though!

Frosty the Elf has been up to some crazy antics lately. I think it's all because he made that Lego plane and is flying himself all around the house. Check out his scarf; he stole the rainbow loom bracelet Will made for me and has been wearing it for the past several days.

On Sunday, I put a couple of presents under the tree for the boys to open early and Frosty found them and parked himself next to the gifts! Will waited so patiently for his little brother to wake up.  

The gift was a Vermont snowflake ornament that I got last summer at Danforth Pewter in Waterbury. This special ornament was designed from an original snow crystal photomicrograph (basically a microscope photograph of a snowflake) taken by Wilson Bentley in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Bentley lived on a farm in Vermont and was fascinated by snow and snowflakes. He discovered that no two snowflakes were alike and wanted to capture the magical beauty of individual snowflakes to share with others. His special camera let him do just that.

To go with the ornament, I got the Caldecott-award-winning book Snowflake Bentley for the boys as well, which tells the story of Wilson Bentley's life beautifully. As an amateur photographer, I'm fascinated by Bentley's work. And of course, the snowflakes will remind of us our visits to Vermont -- even if it's sunny and warm when we visit!

Here's to December traditions, both old and new!