Christmas at the Inn

We had our first measurable snowfall over the weekend, and the girls have been so happy to play outside! It just happened that we put up our Christmas tree on the Sunday that advent started, the same night that we did a small advent coloring craft to get started with the Christmas season. Ever since then, Rebekah has been asking about snow, like somehow we couldn't start celebrating Christmas without it.
 I have a feeling there will be plenty of snow to go around, she needn't worry.


On Sunday, we took the girls to Christmas at the Inn in the Dousman Stagecoach Inn Museum.
 The museum is a beautiful old farmhouse that was used by travelers of the wooden plank road that ran from Milwaukee to Watertown during the 1850s and 1860s. By the 1870s travel by train was much more common and that's when the Inn and it's surrounding land became used primarily for farming. The entire place was decked out in European Christmas decor from times past. It was so pretty.


 The girls loved the Nutcrackers and they even seemed to appreciate reading all the historical explanations for the decorations.


 This particular room is the Fainting Lounge for women visitors to the Inn who quite commonly felt light headed from all the tight undergarments that they wore by custom. The remarkable thing is that the entire house was filled with rooms no larger than what is seen here in this photo. Each room would sleep four or more people, who were often strangers. They would all sleep on one little bed, about half the size of a twin, and could only accomplish this by sleeping in a sitting up position, back to back. Sounds cozy.


 Here the girls are making ornaments by rolling up smarties in tissue paper and then gold or silver foil. Historically, these candy rolls were a fixture on all Christmas trees in German homes, and the moms could always tell which of their children had been obedient in leaving their candy on the tree throughout the Christmas season by watching any guilty party feeling too ashamed to retrieve theirs on Christmas morning. I suspect that if our tree was covered in them, we would have lots of empty rolls.


 I love winter pictures. We took our family Christmas card photo today too, which is always an interesting endeavor.