Burnt Snickerdoodles

I woke up this morning with a lot of my to do list.  After finding a Christmas tree yesterday, I wanted to create the perfect setting for holiday memories to be made this evening when the kids decorated the tree.  I spent my day moving furniture, sweeping, doing laundry, sorting through and donating old toys.  The plan was to have a Hallmark moment.

After we had dinner and bath time, the girls were all wearing matching night gowns.  Then it was time!  Daddy and Evan went out to the garage to get all of our Christmas decorations.  While the boys were hard at work, the girls and I baked a batch of Snicker doodles.  I'm not sure why, but I think you should know, they were the break and bake kind.

While the cookies were baking, I took a picture of Payton and our tree.

Payton and our Christmas Tree.

Daddy and Evan made it inside with our decorations. Addi and Karsyn really enjoyed playing with the ornaments as they waited for cookies and to decorate the tree.

Addi

Karsyn

And that's when things started going downhill.  Jason said very sweetly that the cookies were done.  What he meant was the cookies were burning.  We pulled them out of the oven and they were dark brown. Ugh!

Then, we noticed that our tree was a little crooked.  No problem, right?  Daddy and Evan worked on making the tree stand up straight.

Evan and Daddy

I started helping too and soon the tree was just how we wanted it....until we let go.  Yep, our tree was laying on the floor.  After we mopped up about 20 gallons of water, we started working again to secure the tree.

Payton decided that she was a tree expert, her words, and that she wanted to help.  Here she is in action

Payton

  While Daddy, Payton, and I worked on the tree, Addi and Karsyn were playing away with our decorations.  I heard Addi tell Joseph and Baby Jesus "Happy Birthday, it's time to blow out your candles sweet heart!" I couldn't help but laugh.  A laughing mommy made for an unstable tree.  We all started cutting up and giggling a lot!

That may have been our demise, because as sure as we thought our tree was ready to go, this happened...again!

Ugh! 

The kids all started asking if we could put up our artificial tree.  We weren't ready to give up on our real tree just yet.  It was getting to be about an hour and half past bedtime, so Jason and I made the call that the kiddos should go to bed. 

We finally got the tree up just a short while ago.  And yes, it did fall down again and again!  But it's up now!

The kiddos will decorate our tree, as long as it's standing, tomorrow night after basketball practice and dance class.  Sure, we didn't make the kind of memories that I was hoping for, but I don't think they'll ever forget tonight.  We laughed so hard all evening!