The Growing Caldwell Family

The kids love to bake cookies! This year they really wanted to do iced sugar cookies for Christmas. I haven't done them at Christmas just because they take a lot of time, but we made it part of our plan and they had a great time.  We cut them out and baked them one night while watching A Christmas Story Live. It was a lot of fun and felt relaxing. The next day, Char and I made some chocolate chip cookies that he devoured! We ate some that evening while playing Monopoly Junior! Then, we got to work baking lots of snickerdoodles. There is a church service for the homeless that meets at Woodruff Park and our church was leading the service on Christmas Eve. I thought it would be nice for the parishioners there to have a homemade cookie. I guess because cookies make me feel like Christmas, I thought it would give that same feeling for others. I decided snickerdoodles would be a good one for us to make and we opened our cookie factory! The kids helped roll them

Charlie's class sang several songs during their Christmas program. They sang Ring, Ring, Ring the  Bells and Happy Birthday Jesus, but Charlie was most  excited about singing Jingle Bells in Spanish! I love how confident he feels this year and is so proud of what he can do! Charlie's class also had a brunch with their parents to celebrate the holiday. Fun to see him with his friends and chat with their parents! Charlie and Ryder! Charlie and Miles!

After being out on maternity leave, Sissy's class was very excited to have Ms. Axe back!  Her return was made even better by a Christmas pancake breakfast! It has been her tradition to do one with her students at Christmas and it made a great return to class! They did their morning work while she flipped pancakes! They all brought in yummy toppings for pancakes! We picked whipped cream and sprinkles! Sissy enjoyed their yummy breakfast!

We exchanged gifts with Gramma and Granny. The kids were thrilled to open gifts! Charlie has been learning about physics while building his own amusement park! Sissy was excited to open a new fancy outfit! He was totally thrilled to open a new building toy! Gramma had fun opening her gifts too! Granny helped Sissy with her new Spy Girl set. Sissy loved working on chemistry with her new experiment set! Always fun to get a little cuddle in!

The kids really looked forward to decorating gingerbread houses with Granny and Gramma! They had a blast doing it too!

We couldn't help but sing the popular song from Frozen while we gathered up snow and began to make our own snowman!  Charlie and Granny were the primary builders of our snowman, but we all pitched in some. I hope the kids have sweet memories of the fun we had playing in the snow with Grancy.  Maybe we should call this snowman Peaches II after the snowman Aaron built SG when she was a baby. They were so excited when he didn't melt that day!

The kids REALLY wanted to sled and they persevered at it! The snow just didn't fall the way we needed it to for sledding and people had driven on the roads creating an uneven surface, but they gave it their best! Aaron gave it a shot, too! Daddy even gave /Charlie a pull trying to give them that sledding experience! Maybe next time we will get an icier snow and the leaves will be off the tree letting our driveway be a good sledding spot. 

The heavy, wet snow made for some icy snowballs! We had fun getting each other and Aaron even managed to get a few down our backs! Burrr!