Christmas 2008

I think we can all say that we had a great Christmas. Maybe the best Christmas yet. Matt & I weren't able to buy any presents this year, so we have family and friends to thank for the many gifts our children received. THANK YOU!

Zoe & Emily ran down the hallway around 5:10am Christmas morning. Matt sent them back to bed to wait a bit longer. We all got up at 6:00. I called my parents to wake them out of dreamland to come over and join us. My grandmother came over, too. The kids opened their stockings and tried to browse through their gifts with me telling them to leave their gifts alone every few minutes. Eleanor REALLY wanted to open this big present from Santa!


Grammie & Grampie are here!
Usually we let the kids open their stockings, then we eat breakfast when my parents arrive, and then open gifts. Not this year. I don't think we would have survived breakfast before presents this year, so we opened gifts first.
Zoe and Emily love their snow globes from Santa. Some of the other gifts they love are their new nintendo games, clothes for their American Girl Dolls, Gift cards from Claire's, scarves, sweaters, and coupon books from Grammie to do fun things with her like eating out, going to the movies, and sleeping over.



Kate's baby doll was a big hit with her just like we thought it would be. Grandma sent baby doll accessories, including a beautiful blanket, the cutest little burp cloth, and a baby bed. Kate loves all of it!


Eleanor loves her Nintendo,
this cheerleading outfit for her doll from Grandma & Grandpa and her My Little Pony Carnival from Santa.
Zach got a lot of fun gifts, like his backpack, paint pens, military play set,
rifle, (notice he's shooting Eleanor in the head)
the perfect sized Wall-E,
and this car mat.

Noah tried to catch some zzzzzzz's and was successful for a few minutes.


There's always some crying on Christmas.
We love the ornament that Eleanor made for us! Her smile is so big and contagious.
We are so happy my grandmother is in town for this Christmas weekend. Even Noah is happy and lets her hold him. Did you notice that he now has his very own Longhorns hat?!

Here are some pictures of the kids enjoying their new toys and the rest of Christmas day.



Move over Kate, Noah is taking your seat!
So, breakfast was interesting this year. We didn't have money for our traditional and yummy sausage egg casserole with cinnamon rolls and homemade bread (in the bread machine), so we settled on homemade bread and waffles...the kids requested waffles. They were in luck because I hadn't simplified our waffle iron yet...even though in the 12 years that Matt and I have been married, we have NEVER used it. Why not try it out on Christmas morning? This is why. The first sign of trouble was the batter oozing out of the waffle maker and then the sticking, uncooked batter when we opened it. Guess we're having homemade bread and pancakes made with waffle batter. It worked.

Ho, Ho, Ho! We hope you had a Merry Christmas!


We did! We played, we cleaned, and we sent Zoe and Emily to Mom and Dad's in the afternoon for a sleep over. They were anxious to use those coupons!

Christmas Eve Pictures

Emily's Gingerbread House that she decorated at school yesterday.
We hope you like your cookies, Santa!

Kate sound asleep on the living room floor, missing out on the last of our Christmas Eve fun.



I finally made Noah's ornament this evening. Each of the kids have an ornament like this with their name and year they were born on it. The girls' are red and the boys' are blue.

Noah looking so big!

My sister sends us great Christmas gifts. One year she sent us this Santa cookie plate, cup, and pitcher (Zoe is holding the pitcher in the cookie picture above). I made a new sugar cookie recipe today that I discovered is easy to make shapes with, but as you can see from the picture below, I got rid of our cookie cutters, so we'll have to get more creative next year.

Eleanor drew a picture for Santa and wrote a note to him saying "these are for you", meaning the cookies. She wrote the #5 to tell her age, so he will be understanding of her spelling mistakes.

Merry Christmas Eve!

As of yesterday, I am the proud Mom of the pogo stick record holder at the Miles Lane School! Zoe jumped 592 times in her gym class, beating the 520 record. Way to jump, Zoe!

We all went shopping last night for sibling gifts. I took Eleanor, Zach, Zoe, and Emily into the Family Dollar one by one to look for the perfect gifts while Matt sat in the car waiting. The cashier was so patient with us as we counted out mostly nickels and dimes with each purchase. The kids did a great job staying focused on buying a gift for the sibling whose name they picked from a bag and I think they all picked gifts that their siblings will like. They are all very excited to find out who picked their name and to open their presents!

Yesterday, Eleanor tried to get me to open the gift she made for me and Matt at school and was quite annoyed when I refused. I think it's sweet that she is so anxious for us to open her gift.

Matt and Zoe are off to court this morning. Last night at dinner, Matt mentioned having court this morning and Zoe asked him what he did in court. Matt invited her to go with him to see for herself, so she did. Her assignment is to take note of all the piercings and tattoos that the defendants have and how many the lawyers and judges have.

We'll be making cookies for Santa this afternoon and then we'll head over to my parents' home for our traditional viewing of

and our low-key dinner of sandwiches and chips. We're looking forward to it!

My Groovin' Elves

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

The Latest

FRIDAY: Zach, Kate, Noah, & I went over to Sunshine's house for a playdate. Zach has so much fun playing with Kai and Koa. I spend the time trying to figure out which twin is Kai and which is Koa...I can pretty much tell when they are together, or when they are wearing different colors, but when they are apart I'm not so confident. I also have fun chatting with Sunshine and looking at Baby Bo. She is a few months younger than Noah...future mates???...and she is so good! She is much happier than Noah who I have nicknamed Grumpy Gus. I think he is teething, but no sign of a tooth yet. Lately, I either need to be feeding him or holding him while standing up. I'd really like for him to be content while I'm holding him sitting down.
Side note...Eleanor wants to invite her friend Lucy to her birthday party right now. She doesn't care that her party isn't until May. She's asking me how to spell different words now. It's nice that I can tell her the letters and she says "got it" instead of "what does that look like" which is what she did before going to Kindergarten.
Okay, back to Friday. Matt invited some friends over for Man Camp. So the kids and I picked up Zoe's friend, Morgan, who we invited to spend the night, and then we partied...and stayed warm...and were well fed. My mom came over with Hawaiian pizza, cheese sticks, fries, and soda. We ate, the kids watched episodes of "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody" on Netflix and my mom and I played a game of Phase 10. After my mom left, the kids got settled in by the Christmas tree and watched a few movies. The little ones fell asleep first and the older girls fell asleep during the second movie.

SATURDAY: Zoe had basketball practice at 9am. My parents stopped by to pick Zoe and Morgan up, while the rest of us tidied up and Matt unfroze our kitchen pipes. Luckily, closing all the heat vents except for the one in the kitchen did the trick. Zoe and Morgan wanted to go sledding and frankly I wanted to send them outside, but it was too cold. Dawn, you didn't need to send the deep freeze our way! It has been cold, cold, cold! In the afternoon, I met Morgan's mom at a nearby gas station, so Morgan could head home with her family and then Zoe, Emily, Noah and I went to Family Dollar to buy a gift for Emily's classmate, Emily who Emily picked to buy for. Did you catch that? Usually I have my Sunday School lesson pretty much squared away by Saturday, but this day I had no idea what I was going to do for my lesson and I couldn't seem to buckle down and put a lesson together. My mom came over to play another game of Phase 10 and then she took Eleanor and Zach home with her to spend the night. That was nice. Eleanor and Zach were so excited to be going over that all morning they asked when Grammie was going to be here, so they could leave. After dinner, I finally shut myself in my room with Grumpy Gus to prepare my lesson. I wondered why I was having such a hard time preparing it and wondered if I was even going to teach the lesson, but I was going to be prepared either way. I didn't come out until it was prepared, a few hours later. Everyone was sound asleep, including Matt, but not Grumpy Gus of course.

SUNDAY: We woke up to another cold day and the pipe to our toilet was frozen. We didn't have time to fix it before church, so we got ready and left. We were expecting a big snow storm to start in the afternoon, but it started to snow a bit on our way to church. When I saw the snow, I had a strong feeling that we would only have Sacrament meeting and I wouldn't be teaching my class. We were a little late getting to church, but Matt heard the announcement that there would only be Sacrament meeting and he sent Emily back to the coat rack where I was to let me know. Now I could enjoy our Christmas program knowing I didn't have to teach my lesson. Zoe and Emily did a great job singing a song with the Primary kids (Eleanor refused) and Zoe did a great job reciting the scriptures she memorized for the program. She spoke slowly and clearly and we were very proud! The program was so uplifting and the music was beautiful. We went over to my parents' home after church for lunch and to celebrate my Dad's birthday. We had a very nice time. When we got home, we shut all the vents except for the bathroom vent and unfroze the pipe to the toilet. We prepared for a power outage, but thankfully it never happened.

TODAY (MONDAY): No school...Snow Day! We got the snow we anticipated and it looks like we'll be having a white Christmas. :-)
Another cold morning and the kitchen pipes were frozen, so I unfroze them with the shutting vents trick. We are so thankful that works! I've been cleaning today and the kids have been cleaning, holding Noah, watching "Zack and Cody" and playing in the snow. It has been a pretty good day. The girls actually wanted to go to school today because they were going to have their Christmas parties, but they'll have them tomorrow. They have a half day tomorrow and then they'll be on Christmas vacation! We are all excited for Christmas!

Learning About Diwali

I took Zach, Kate, and Noah into Zoe's classroom this afternoon to watch her presentation on Diwali...India's holiday. Her class has separated into groups to study different countries and how they celebrate Christmas. Zoe hasn't had a lot of homework during this project because she was supposed to be doing a project with her group or on her own. Her project turned out to be me going to Walmart with my mom and picking up dried fruit. I'm surprised Zoe didn't put more effort into the homework part of the project. It will be interesting to see what grade she gets for her homework portion of the project. Anyway, the kids and I sat through 3 presentations, one of them was Zoe's group. It was stressful. Zach was not super quiet like I asked him to be and Kate wandered around. After the first presentation, Mrs. LaLonde encouraged her students to focus on the presentation and not on the little ones. Great, we're a distraction here. When the first group got up front to do their presentation over again because a grandparent had showed up late, I took the kids out into the hall because I just could not sit through another presentation. This turned out to be a bad decision because the kids still needed to be quiet, but weren't, and now they had the hall to run up and down. We then had snacks when the presentation was over, which was also stressful because cups of rice pudding were given to Kate and Zach. I was expecting a huge spill at any moment, but they did very well and only dribbled on themselves. Minor. I was so ready to leave when the kids finished their snacks. The grandparent who arrived late turned out to be a huge help when we left. When he saw me rounding up the kids to leave, he helped Kate with her boots and coat and then he offered to carry her out, which at first Kate looked at him like he was crazy, but then she held her arms out to him. He walked with me to the car and after I got everyone in the car along with myself, I was glad the adventure was over and vowed never to go anywhere again with the kids...until tomorrow morning for a play date, but that's different. An outing like today just makes me appreciate more our lazy winter days at home. After I told my mom about my afternoon, she offered to take the day off next time something comes up at school like that, and I think that's a great idea! Zoe did a great job on her project with her group. Mrs. LaLonde said Zoe's class has done the best work on their projects than any other class. I wonder if she says that every year.
Here is Kate trying to get Zoe's attention before her presentation.

Here is Zoe during her presentation

and here is me letting Kate play with my camera to keep her happy and quiet.

There are 4 more pictures like this, but I won't bore you with them.

On a different note, I stopped by the library on our way home to drop off some books and Mrs. Spooner gave me "The Christmas Sweater" by Glenn Beck to read. I had asked Emeric, who also works at the library, about a month ago if they were planning on getting a copy of Glenn Beck's book, so he wrote the title down. I had forgotten I had asked about it, so it was a pleasant surprise when they brought it up. Matt read it this evening and said it was good. I am currently reading "The Santa Letters" by Stacy Gooch-Anderson, which is very good. I thought it would be my last Christmas book of the season, so I was taking my time reading it, but now I will finish it and read "The Christmas Sweater" in the next week. I read "Christmas Jars" by Jason F. Wright and that is a great book! I highly recommend it. It made me want to start my own Christmas jar for next Christmas.

Mr. Noah

is at the age where playing with anything he shouldn't be playing with is a lot more fun than playing with his toys. When I was getting ready for bed last night, Noah was too quiet and content. Matt and I found him playing with the Christmas lights...his toy abandoned for the bright, blue bulbs!


Thank you for sharing your favorite children's Christmas books. I hope to read them in the future. The kids opened this book last night and Matt said it is his favorite so far.


It is snowing! Apparently it is not affecting the roads because the kids are at school. They'll be home soon enough, though because they only have half a day. I'm thinking they can spend the afternoon outside playing in the snow. :-)

Favorite Christmas Books

Emily unwrapped this Christmas book last night, which has become a favorite. It is such a cute story and the pictures are beautiful.


The kids also unwrapped a bonus book from Grandma & Grandpa. When the 3 older girls saw the cover of the book, they got excited and all said they have heard the story and love it. It IS a great story...but we knew it would be because Grandma always picks out the best books! Thanks, Janet!


What Christmas books do your kids love to read?

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree...

This picture doesn't really do our tree justice, but we have our Christmas tree! A shorter tree with the top still on would look better, but once the tree was inside, it was staying inside, so we cut the top off. Why didn't we cut the bottom off instead? Because we're too lazy. This isn't the tree I picked out, but I think the same thing would have happened with my "perfect tree". Matt and I put the lights on and then the kids put the ornaments on the tree. I handed the ornaments out to keep things organized and to make sure the homemade ornaments and name ornaments were put on the tree by the creators and child who matched the name. I think it went very well. The kids had a great time and the tree looks well balanced...I think that is due to Matt's supervision.



Kate refused to pose with her siblings.

Ice Day

The kids are home from school today because of the freezing rain we are getting. An actual snow day would be more fun. Everyone was so confident that today would be a "snow day" that the kids brought home their brown envelopes with information that usually comes home on Fridays yesterday and we didn't set the alarm last night. We got up around 7:00 this morning to check the storm center website and confirmed the "snow day". It is very noisy around here and I'm having a hard time concentrating, so I'll update tomorrow...if I survive.

Dreaming of a White Christmas

It rained Tuesday night and all day yesterday, so all of our snow is gone. You would think living in Maine would guarantee a white Christmas, but it doesn't. It is such a bummer to wake up Christmas morning when the world outside is brown and green. At least it is for me. Maybe we should move to Houston. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Matt and I watched an episode of "Jon & Kate Plus Eight" last night. I'm not sure if it was the latest episode or not since it was the only episode available to watch on the Discovery website, but it was fun to watch. It was sort of like watching my own life, only I have 2 less and none of my kids are the same age. The sayings that came out of the mom's mouth were hilarious! It is a series I would like to watch from beginning to end now and I want to read their book, Multiple Bles8ings.

We also watched the movie, "Intolerable Cruelty" which I picked out and didn't like, but Matt enjoyed it. I fell asleep watching it, just as Matt predicted.

Happy Annivesary Matt!

We have been married 12 years, so here are 12 things I love about Matt.

1. He is fun to be around. I always look forward to spending time with him.

2. He is a great storyteller. I love to listen to him tell the story of the three little pigs to our children. Even Kate breaks out into laughter at his funny voices.

3. He works hard as a lawyer to provide for our family.

4. He doesn't expect or want me to work outside the home. When I come up with my own ideas of working from home, he thinks I am crazy.

5. He is smart. I love how he challenges our kids intellectually and encourages them to learn new things.

6. He is a big fan of datenight and insists on going out every week when possible.

7. He is not a workaholic. He works 40 hours a week (except during a big trial!) and is home most nights for dinner and for the evening.

8. He is a great Dad and he takes great care of the children when I am not here. He is a huge help even when I am around, giving baths, changing diapers, reading stories, making dinner, waiting with the girls for the bus in the morning, etc...

9. He is selfless. When he offered the other day to buy Zoe & Emily winter boots with his birthday gift card, I was reminded of how wonderful and caring he is.

10. He is always striving to be prepared for the future, which I appreciate because I tend to think more of the here and now. What we have for food storage, 72 hour kits, and car kits we have Matt to thank for.

11. He is an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and he is a worthy Priesthood holder. I am blessed that we were sealed in the temple 11 years ago.

12. He tells me and shows me that he loves me everyday...but I love you more, Matt! :-)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In other news...

Zoe, Emily, and Eleanor brought home great report cards yesterday! Zoe was so proud of her straight A's and her Honor Roll certificate from her teacher and she should be. Here are some comments from their teachers.

Eleanor~ Eleanor is an enthusiastic learner who readily accepts academic challenges. She has positive student behaviors and work habits. She's an active participant in class discussions. She gets along well with her peers and is a responsible and respectful student.

Emily~ Emily displays all the qualities of an effective student and friend. She is a good role model and I hope she emerges as a leader for her peers.

Emily enjoys reading and comprehends well. She uses punctuation to guide her fluency and reads with expression. Emily works hard and is willing to read any type of literature.

Emily puts effort into her writing and is eager to edit and improve her stories. In class, we are working on developing our ideas and adding details.

Emily is motivated to do well in math and understands the concepts presented. She is a regular participant in class discussions on strategies. We are working on the automatic recall of addition and subtraction facts to 20.

Our field trips really inspired an interest in butterfly and tree units for science. Emily made descriptive observations of the life cycle of the butterfly.

Zoe~
Zoe is kind, well behaved and well liked. She needs a bit more confidence in herself as a learner, but is very conscientious. I am encouraging her to take more risks.

Zoe's writing is clear and interesting. She is writing a nonfiction report and is doing well with note taking, using detail and focusing on important points. She is learning to organize thoughts into paragraphs and to punctuate.

Zoe is developing into a more sophisticated reader as she tackles harder material. She is able to navigate nonfiction texts to gather needed information and she continues to eat up books.

Zoe is doing well in learning spelling patterns and rules, as well as expanding her vocabulary.

Zoe is working well in every area of math thinking and problem-solving. She will be ready to work on more advanced problem-solving very soon.

Zoe is learning basic geography skills and location strategies. She is working hard on the Christmas in other lands unit and has been challenged to study two countries.

Zoe has demonstrated solid understanding of beaver and falcon habitat, as well as ecology and health. She often contributes to class discussion.

I also feel the need to document my outing with Zoe, Emily, Noah, and my mom last night to the Girls' JV and Varsity games, so when my kids cry that we NEVER do anything fun, I have proof. :-) I also need to record the fact that the Varsity coach thinks Noah is the cutest baby around. Who doesn't think that? :-)

Okay, I'm done.

5 Months Old

Noah turned 5 months old yesterday! Matt calls him "velcro" because he grabs onto everything! He is at the stage where he will grab your plate as you are eating if you are not paying attention, but he hasn't been successful yet (knock on wood). He is constantly yanking on my hair. He instantly rolls to his tummy when we put him on his back and he enjoys playing with his toys on his tummy.




Kate turned 22 months on Saturday. It's weird to think that she isn't 2 yet! She got bundled up in her snowsuit yesterday afternoon to go play outside with her siblings.

She is so dang cute!...even with the binkie in her mouth. She went out with her binkie, but didn't come back in with her binkie. She is too attached to her binkie to lose any! However, that one is yet to be found.

It was very cold out yesterday. Too cold for the kids to be playing outside, but I didn't realize that at the time because I was comfortable in our warm home. The girls didn't have outside recess at school and our cold water line in the kitchen froze up in the afternoon, but I was thinking something came loose and that is why the water wasn't coming on. Thankfully the water fixed itself at dinnertime and Zoe & Emily only suffered from minor frostbite.

Breaking Tradition

It has become a tradition on the first Saturday of the month to go to the Creche Exhibit at our Stake Center and then head over to the parade of lights. After watching the parade last year in 17 degree weather, my mom and I decided to skip the parade this year since I would have to bring Noah. We did make it to the Creche Exhibit where Zoe and Emily sang in the children's choir, the older kids and I walked around to look at all the beautiful nativities while Matt took the younger kids to the children's area, and then we all hung out in the children's area before leaving. The kids love doing all the crafts, dressing up, and especially love decorating a yummy cookie to eat.


Kate loved playing Mary riding the donkey...

Mentioning cookie decorating was a great way to get her off the donkey!

Zoe and Emily each made a nativity scene to be displayed at the Creche Exhibit. Here is Emily's...

Here is Zoe's...


We came home to grab some lunch before heading separate ways for the afternoon. Matt took Eleanor to her first friend birthday party at the bowling center (Abby's) and he took Kate with him. I took Zoe, Emily, and Zach to our first Girls' Varsity basketball game. We watched most of the Boys' JV game and then the girls game. They both lost. I had a great time watching the new Girls' Varsity coach. She is very serious about the game and has great facial expressions and tantrums when the refs make bad calls (which they made several) and her players don't do what they are supposed to. Zoe was a bit concerned about playing for a coach like that and I wondered how I would feel if that was my daughter getting yelled at by the coach. Zach was bored when we first got there and he kept asking when we were leaving. He was distracted for a bit when my dad arrived to watch the games with us. Then Zach entertained himself with the programs, wandering around the benches near us, drinking water, eating m&m's, and listening to the band. He did great considering the long time we were there and he had no interest in actually watching the games.

I was hoping to get our Christmas tree in our house during Saturday's busy schedule, but it didn't happen. It snowed Saturday and yesterday, so it would have been a messy day to bring it in anyway.

Thank you for the gift ideas for Zach! I think he would be happy with any type of Wall-E toy, so I'll do more research on that and he loves playing with his DUPLO LEGOS, so adding to those is a great idea, too.

Celebrating & Gift Ideas

Thanks to my mom and dad (for money and for my mom watching the kids), Matt and I were able to go out to Pizzeria Uno last night to celebrate our 12 year anniversary! Our anniversary is actually on Wednesday, but we decided to celebrate on datenight. Noah was happy in his carseat through most of dinner and then was content to sit on my lap as I finished my meal. I'm glad I didn't have to feed him because we were sitting by the door and it was cold, so we were all bundled up in our coats. Dinner was delicious as usual and the company was great as usual. :-) After dinner, we stopped at Toys R Us to buy the Wall-E remote controlled robot for Zach for Christmas, but they were sold out. When we checked on-line after we got home, within 5 minutes of being on the web page, it became out of stock. The Nerf dart gun that Matt wants to get for Zach is also out of stock. Hmmmm, any gift ideas for a 3 1/2 year old boy??? I think it's time to be thinking of plan C.

Still Waiting

Well, we still don't have a tree. The problem is we still have our air conditioner in the window near where the tree will go. I want the air conditioner out before the tree comes in, but the air conditioner is too heavy for me to handle on my own...I assume since Matt commented on how heavy it is. I've been tempted to try to move it myself, but then I have thought better of it. The plan now is to remove the air conditioner and bring our tree in tomorrow morning.

I had a good day yesterday, even though it was a long day with the kids since Matt didn't get home until after we were all asleep in bed. I did a little bit of everything that I needed/wanted to do. I did some scrapbooking, I worked on my Sunday School lesson, I read some of "Christmas Jars", and I read books to the kids. Noah has been wanting to be held a lot lately, so I held him while doing most of that. I worked on our scrapbook while he took his morning nap.

I took a picture of Kate yesterday peacefully playing with the doll house all by herself.

Because when her older sisters are around she gets lectured about not touching anything in the doll house when they are playing.


Zach and Kate have been taking pictures with my camera. I have 63 pictures of Dora on the computer screen.

It's a good thing we are in the digital age and I can delete unwanted pictures!

Do I dare cut down the tree?

I found our Christmas tree yesterday when the kids and I went out to play. I think it's perfect and I hope the rest of the family thinks so, too. It's close to the house, so Matt won't have to go far with it after he chops it down. I thought about chopping it down myself yesterday, but I was determined to get some scrapbooking done, which I did, and Noah started getting fussy when the thought entered my mind. We usually end up getting our tree the week before Christmas, but I'd like to get it earlier this year...like I say every year, but maybe this year it will really happen! Maybe Matt will find our Christmas tree up and decorated when he gets home from his High Council meeting...

Speaking of meetings, I went to my first P.T.O. meeting last night. I've been wanting to go since September, but last night's meeting was the first I was available to go to. I'm still trying to figure out why I feel the need to go to these meetings. I guess it's my way to volunteer at this time with small children at home. As fund raisers are discussed, I can volunteer to do the things that can be done from home. I didn't walk away with any assignments last night, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

Michief

When I got out of the shower a bit ago, Zach and Kate came into the bathroom. Kate was wearing the raisin container on her foot and exclaiming, "shoe!, shoe!". Zach proudly announced that they emptied the raisins out of the container. So I went to investigate and found this...


Good times, good times!

Time to Scrapbook

All the decorating is done (we just need a tree) and cleanup is done. Today I move on to scrapbooking. I'd like to have our 2008 book completed before 2009 begins, which means I have an entire year to work on!

FYI~ The tic-tac-toe game was a Christmas gift given to us a few years ago. It's an Avon product. You can go on e-bay and buy the one we have and they also have other selections as well.

I've been meaning to document Kate's first sentence, so here it is..."I don't want it!"...usually said in tantrum mode.

And here is a picture of Noah who has discovered his feet.

Christmas Decorating

Decorating for Christmas was fun last night. The kids are so excited to have Christmas lights up in their room again! Zoe & Matt spent a lot of time untangling the numbered bags that our little doll sits in and I need to finish untangling today, so that is not up yet. We listened to Liza's Christmas CD (she's in our branch), which has fun, beautiful harp music and some singing. We played with our Christmas tic-tac-toe game, which may need new figures next year because the reindeer have many broken antlers from being used last year.

We ended the evening with oreos. I have a bit more decorating to do today and a lot of cleanup.

I may also start on my Christmas reading. I love reading Christmas stories during the month of December! Right now I have "Christmas Jars" by Jason F. Wright and "The Santa Letters" by Stacy Gooch-Anderson to read. Kate and Zach are requesting a reading from me, so I gotta go.

Let the countdown begin!

Thanksgiving break is over. It ended with cookie baking, discovering and naming a new camp on our land, "Camp...something that starts with C that I can never remember, Christmas shopping, and wrapping books. It's great to have a mom who wraps half the books for me!


Tonight we decorate for Christmas and start our countdown to Christmas. Zach will unwrap the first book, Eleanor will color the first set of scriptures and hold a picture while we read Isaiah 7:14 and 9:6-7.

Emily will put the first puzzle piece on our nativity puzzle.

And Zoe will put our little Christmas doll in bag #1 to start her journey to Christmas Eve.


Merry Christmas season!