It’s a week before Christmas but it doesn’t feel like it.  I realize some of you are buried in snow with sub freezing temps but where I’m at the sun is out and it’s close to 60 degrees.  I’ve been trying to force the feel of Christmas in my little life but I’m not too sure how it’s working.  I’ve got Donnie Osmond and Bing Crosby singing their little Christmas hearts out and it’s great, don’t get me wrong.  But listening to that for more than three trips to Walmart is enough for me to toss the CDs out the window.

A few weeks ago my mom bought a second Christmas tree to put up in the house.  The main one is fancy shmancy  and sits in the front windows.  This is a little four footer and is placed in the back part of the house.  There is still some debate as to why she bought this second tree but since this is my blog, the reason is because my brother wanted to put multi-colored lights and our old ornaments on a tree.  So this tree was purchased to appease him.  Only it sat on the floor in it’s box day after day.  Apparently my brother didn’t want colored lights enough to actually place them on the tree.  I don’t really enjoy decorating trees, I know bah-humbug, but after a while the box seemed to call out and out of pity I answered.

Here’s our Charlie Brown Christmas tree:

See, there’s a reason I don’t decorate trees.  Apparently there were smaller lights at the bottom of the bin that I probably should have used instead.  Whatever.  And we had a star that lit up but it was too heavy so I put that cheap tinsel thing on top.  Good enough.

This past Wednesday I had the girls in my church Activity Day group come over to decorate cookies.  Tuesday I spent about three hours baking and while it doesn’t look like much when all is said and done, there are a little over 200 cookies in those bins (and no those aren’t burned, I promise).

Considering I had 12 girls ages 8-11 in my kitchen decorating cookies, all seemed to go relatively smooth.  When they left and I could better see the counter and table, it looked like the icing had declared war on the sprinkles and the kitchen lost the battle.  I fully meant to take pictures during the whole night but once things got rolling I completely forgot.  Here are a couple I got in the beginning:

Some of the girls were concentrating pretty hard while decorating (though I thought best to crop out their faces for the blog).  I have to give some creativity points to some of the girls for how they chose to decorate their cookies.  Others, if I’m being honest, looked vomitous.  Guess they don’t do a lot of homemade baked goods in their home.

Those above were some of the better ones.  And as an extra treat, I made fudge earlier in the day for them to take home.  Hmm…fudge.

To cap off my week of Christmas spirit tries, I’m going to help out at the Christmas party for the daycare.  Could my social life get any better?  I’m 30, single, and am going to spend my Friday night at a Christmas party…for 2-4 year olds.  Last Friday night and the Friday night before that, I was at two different church parties helping out.  I am one wild and crazy lady let me tell you.

Seeing little kids sing Christmas songs to their parents should help bring the Christmas spirit.  I say should because it remains to be seen.  I’m with these kids a couple of times a week.  I see them tattle and cry over nothing and hit each other with building blocks.  And while sometimes I secretly root a few of them on, the overall angelic aura of children starts to wain.  *sigh*  Oh who am I kidding, even the brattiest of children is cute in a Santa hat singing Jingle Bells…right?