Open your door at Christmas time, and you may be surprised at who you'll see.The Von 'Jones' Family singers. (not as widely known as the Von Trapp family, and not as talented...but just as cute. :)


After making plates of peppermint bark, ginger snaps, rocky road and of course, orange rolls, we set out, a merry group of carolers to some friends' homes.

A few days before, when Ethan went up skiing, the twins helped me string dried orange & lime slices and cranberries. It turned out very pretty. We made our string a little too long, but it looked nice, all the same, behind the Christmas tree.
All of Christmas Eve was full of baking, caroling and sitting by the fire listening to Christmas music. Pretty much how I remember it all growing up. The only difference was the frequent trips to the computer to watch NORAD Santa Tracker...full of News Flashes reporting where Santa was and a few actual clips of Santa and his Reindeer. Strange how the kids didn't register that Santa was a cartoon in each of those clips. Ethan, who has been trying his best to catch me denying the existence of Santa all week, blurted out, "See! That is a real video of Santa. On the computer! His is totally real. Asia (a girl in his class) is SO wrong! I'm going to tell her about this! Santa is real!" Ahh, my little black & white child. I'm going to have to break it to him gently next year before he gets into fistfights about it.

But not this year. Because, this year, Santa arrived at our house about 1 in the morning. He swooped down the chimney, filled up the stockings, ate the cookies and wrote a note to the kiddies. This year, he IS real.