December Fun

Making Gingerbread houses with our friends: Kyle was not as interested as the girls were


Making rolo pretzels







Hand and Foot Reindeer




Troy and Kyle watching the Chirstmas Ship Parade in Everett





Cookies ready to deliver to our neighbors





Gingerbread men cookies






Kyle's cookie


Last year a friend of mine (thanks Beth S.) gave me the idea to start a tradition with my kids to do a fun activity each day to celebrate Advent/Christmas.


Here are some of the things we did this year:

Get a Christmas Tree at Farmer Browns
Decorate a Christmas Tree in your room
Christmas Ships in Everett
Drive around and see Christmas Lights with cocoa
Bellevue Square Mall-Snowflake Lane
Bake and Decorate Christmas cookies/gingerbread men
Hand and Foot Reindeer
Pick toys to donate to needy kids
Watch our favorite Christmas movies
Make a graham cracker gingerbread house
make fudge
make rolo pretzels
read Christmas books
deliver cookies and cards to our neighbors
visit Santa and go out to dinner
do chores around the house to earn money to donate to "The Arrival" at church

I am excited to add to this list each year and create wonderful Christmas memories for our family!

Missing Auntie Sarah!

Read Kaden's shirt....that is what he wants for Christmas!

Christmas Tree Farm

Every year we head out to Farmer Brown's Christmas Tree Farm in search of the perfect Schwenke Family Christmas Tree. We load up the truck and fill our travel mugs with hot cocoa. This year is the first time Auntie Sarah has not joined us...since she lives in Thailand. We missed having her there with us.
For some reason we have a hard time agreeing on what the "perfect" tree really looks like. We tend to spend way too much time wandering around the huge farm in search of THE tree. When we find one we like we try to remember where it is and then go see if there are any others better than that one. But we usually want to go back and find the first one and usually can't seem to find it.
This year we were on a mission. It was cold. We had a 7 week old baby with us that wanted to have some mommy milk very soon. We had to make it quick. We found our tree in record time and still had fun! Kyle LOVED measuring the trees with his tape measure and he enjoyed walking through the "forest" (as he called it)
We found a great tree and we can't wait to decorate it!
It was a success!
And I am thankful for my handsome husband and cute helper that did all the sawing and lifting. I just got to cuddle the baby the whole time :)