December 3: My mom ordered a pattern for a super neato advent calendar and spent many hours sewing it for us. It has Jesse tree ornaments and verses. Hannah loved hanging up the ornaments and helping to tell the stories.

My sister sent me a recipe for easy gluten-free cookies since we’re trying to keep Violet off for a while to iron out some digestive issues (but she’s doing better with dairy, woohoo!).

So the cookies turned out well even though I didn’t really use the actual measurements and I added a banana. Someone was trying to sneak them while I was taking a picture.

Then a cookie meltdown ensued. There was wailing and repeated pointing to the cookies while dramatically signing “please.” So we took a cookie meltdown picture.

After dinner, we decorated the Christmas tree. There is the classic kid clump of ornaments in the front center.

Yep, there were shorts worn while decorating the Christmas tree. Texas.

Violet recently learned how to do “cheers” with her cup and thinks it is quite exciting. You can see the gusto.

It was really a pretty quiet day at home, so the Christmas activities do supply some extra photo moments. Now hopefully Violet will break her trend of the last week of getting up four times a night, so I can have some sleep. After I rearrange the ornaments just a bit…