Christmas Cookies

Yesterday was spent baking, rolling, cutting, and frosting cookies. The kids really enjoyed rolling out the dough this year and cutting the cookies out, but they lost interest in frosting pretty early on. But that's okay it still a lot of fun!

Rolling the dough. Cutting them out.

Busy frosting and sprinkling them.

Although they might not be featured on the next Christmas issue of Martha Stewart Magazine, they turned out cute! :)

We had TONS of cookies, so we made up plates this morning and the kids delivered them to the neighbors. We made sure to save some for us and for Santa!

Here they are delivering the cookies to our neigbhors. :) It was nice being able to send them to the deliver cookies while I stayed home (and warm!). :)

Stella's Christmas Program

The 1st graders at Stella's school had a Christmas program at today. They performed in the parish hall and sang 5 or 6 songs. It was a really cute!

Here is the entire 1st grade.
Stella looks so small! I don't consider her to be petite, I think she just ended up next to a couple of taller girls! She's in the 2nd row, 3rd from the end.

After the concert the parents were invited back to the classrooms to look at the students nativities they had made.

Stella with her friend Berlin. Of course acting goofy!

I thought I had actually gotten a nice photo of them until I realized that Berlin is giving some bunny ears! LOL!! Oh well, this is the best it gets!

Watson Christmas

We celebrated Christmas with my side of the family this past weekend. Mom always goes way out to make things special for everyone! We had a great weekend in MA and look forward to spending time with everyone again! :)
Friday night we started out having the kids frost gingerbread ornaments. The frosting had to set over night to harden in order for it to be painted the next day. The kids thought this was a fun craft!
Stella and Hannah Porter and Haydn

Saturday morning the first things out of their mouths was "Can we open presents?", of course! :) All the cousins draw names so we let them open their cousin gifts that morning. They all received great things! Lots of games this year, which was great for them to play with the remainder of the day.

That afternoon they painted their ornaments.

Mom and Dad had friends/family over that evening and before everyone started to arrive they read The Night Before Christmas, they've done this every year since Hannah was a baby. :) But this is the first year they've blinged out the photo with awesome accessories!!

Of course Rex came to MA with us!! Stella and I were at Target last week and she BEGGED me to get this Santa Claus outfit for Rex. It is pretty cute! Although I must say that Rex pretty much hates it!!

Here's our little "Santa Paws" or "Santa Claws"!!! :)

My cousin Abby is SO good with the kids! She let them braid her hair! :)

Mom and her sister, Joan. Not sure they were wanting three little munchkins in this photo!

Sunday was "Christmas morning" at the Watson household! Porter is already dressed b/c he feel asleep in his clothes the night before!

One of Stella's gifts was an ice cream maker. Of course she had to try it out right away. :0)

One of the items in their stockings was a harmonica! (Thanks, mom!!!!!) (in case you are wondering Stella has a blanket stuffed up her shirt, pretending she's pregnant!).

Porter's Christmas Program

Porter had his preschool Christmas program today and it was SO CUTE!!! Loved it! He did a really good job and I think he enjoyed singing his songs and doing all the motions to the songs. They performed 8 or 9 songs, but they were pretty short. They all did a good job. :)

Here he is walking in to the sanctuary to go up on "stage." He was all super-fly with his hands in his pockets. LOL! He's cute and he knows it! :)

His class. Mitchell (the boy in the blue sweater vest in the front row) was SO HILARIOUS during this song. He was screaming the words (as you can tell!) the entire audience was laughing so hard. It was awesome. :)

Again with his hand in his pocket! :)

Mrs. Keller (the preschool director) said that she really didn't want to do this song, but the kids insisted because they got to play with the scarves!

The last song was "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" and during the chorus they had to swing their fists up in the air, I thought this was cute of P and his friends. :) (Still has his hand in his pocket, must be his new thing!)

Porter with his best bud, Brant!

Christmas Activities and more! :)

We've been busy the past couple of weeks getting into the Christmas spirit! :) What a wonderful time of year!!
Last weekend we headed to MA to spend the weekend with my parents and have the kids ride in the lighted Christmas parade on Saturday night. We weren't blessed with great weather, it was rainy most of the day, so instead of driving the convertible in the parade like my parents had hoped they had to settle for the mini van. The kids didn't care, they still had a ball!
Mike and Wes spent a few hours getting the car decked out to look like the "Griswolds on wheels"! We missed having the Cunninghams in attendance this year, but look forward to them being there next year!
Here are Mike and Wes getting the van decked out in lights. I didn't get a shot of the back of the van but they had a "W" (for Watson!) in the rear window of the van. Very clever, boys!! :) Luckily for them, the garage is heated so they stayed nice and toasty warm. The van headed to the parade.

Rex made the trip to MA with us, he really seems to enjoy hanging out on the quilts in the pie safe.

The van during the parade. The theme this year was something about family traditions.

After the parade, enjoying some of Nana's sugar cookies!

Porter loading up his stick with marshmallows for some S'mores.
A few people stopped over on Saturday night. Aunt Karleen is SO GOOD with the kids. She played Cats Cradle with them forever!

Dad making S'mores with the kiddos. (Funny....I don't remember EVER making S'mores in the fireplace when I was a child!! Guess grandparenthood has chilled him out!)

Poor Stella---eating a S'more is hard with no front teeth!

Hannah approves!

Monday we decided to give Rex his first bath! Needless to say, Rex was NOT happy about this! I waited until Mike got home from work for the bath (good decision on my part!), we both still ended up soaked!

Rexy after his bath.

He looks so skinny and small when he was all wet!

Thursday night we hosted our annual Christmas party for my mom's group (it was total chaos with close to 50 people in attendance and I didn't get any photos taken! :( ). The night before we had the kids decorate their "kids" tree. We purchased a live tree (Stella didn't know you could have a REAL tree for a Christmas tree as we have only had artificials in the past), and the kids decorated it all by themselves with their ornaments.

All lit up!

The party was Thursday night so Friday night we took it easy and decorated gingerbread houses after baths. As always, they were a big hit!

Porter's finished house.

Stella's finished house.

Saturday morning kicked off the first of our holiday baking. We made melted snowman cookies. It was a lot of fun! We'll make lots more cookies next week once Stella is out of school.

Some of the finished products. They turned out pretty cute. :)

And last but not least!!! Stella playing with the Magnatiles on Sunday afternoon.