Christmas Stuff

The annual star placement.

Derrick and Jack did the cookie house this year.  Very elaborate and colorful.

We also went to a lantern walk to celebrate the solstice at Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary.

First, we each made a lantern.

 Then we listened to a story about the solstice and went on a short hike.

We got to have some hot chocolate after the hike.

Jack likes the music for the Nutcracker.  Not wanting to spend $200 for us to go to the ballet and take the chance of Jack not liking it, we instead went to the Urban Nutcracker in Boston which uses a lot of Duke Ellington's version of the Nutcracker music and has different types of dancing other than ballet.  Jack remained interested until almost the end, but I think all of us were ready to go after two hours.

Jack had most of the week off from school and Derrick had time off work, so they got around to baking.

Jack decorated these ricotta cookies and was pretty proud of himself.

- S.