Christmas Lights Walk-thru

Yes, it is officially mid-January and I am still posting about Christmas-y stuff. Blogger and its' photo uploader HATE me this past month, and it's caused a bit-o-delay in the blogging.

Whew. Glad I got that out of the way.

A few days before Christmas, my parents popped down for a quick overnight visit while they were visiting my GG a couple of hours away. (Oh, by the way, my 93 year old grandmother went to a New Year's Eve party and I didn't. She actually was helping with the food and planning, so I guess technically she co-hosted a New Year's Eve party. I have never once been to a New Year's Eve party. Perhaps I'll start hosting them when I'm 93.)

Where was I? Parents. Here. A couple of days before Christmas. For the past few years, a nearby town has had this cool Christmas light display that you can walk around in, so we went to check that out with the kiddos. It wasn't quite as good this year as it has been in the past, but I still managed to take a few bad pictures of my kids. Someday I will learn how to actually use my camera.

I took this picture of the girls with Brandon last year:

Such sweet baby girls with their chubby cheeks and their short hair.

And this is how the picture turned out this year:

Story of our life. And yes, two-year and nine-month old Harper is still in a diaper. Idontwanttotalkaboutit. Potty training? It could be going better.

We may have broken a rule or two by straying off the sidewalk, but at this point our children fully expect to stick their face right into the light display.

I'm just glad Aidan didn't find someone else's clothes to wear this year.

And with that, on this brisk January 15 day, I am officially DONE posting about Christmas 2011. Maybe sometime in February I'll celebrate New Year's.

Are You Ready For Some Football?

On one of the adventure walks over Christmas with the family, the boys stumbled on a football field at a local school.

I'm still a little fuzzy on how they got onto the field (who leaves a stadium unlocked over Christmas break?), but I don't think anyone was surprised when they grabbed their ball and gloves and headed out the next day to go check it out.

Uncle Izzy appears to have been in full on "coach mode".
And Dane did some training...

And it looks like everyone worked on their kicking game a bit.
I love Emerson's crossed arms in the above picture. She no doubt was bossing those boys around on the football field.

This may or may not have been my boys' favorite part of the whole trip.
Not everyone got to play. There was one cute little cheerleader.
Now to somehow talk this school into keeping their field open every holiday...

More Christmas 2011

Christmas 2011, continued...

After we finished opening presents on Christmas Day, we loaded up the van and headed 4 hours away to Brandon’s parents’ house to spend a few days with lots of family and LOTS of little cousins. Both of Brandon’s sisters and their family were there, and Brandon’s grandmother spent a few days with us also. I’m just going to run through a few highlights of the trip with a handful (okay, 20) of pictures:

Opening more presents. Madden DS games for the boys
Cabbage Patch Dolls for the girls.

I had a wave of nostalgia watching the girls open their Cabbage Patch Dolls. I think they're a generation too young to truly appreciate the significance of the Cabbage Patch Christmas. I clearly remember my CP Christmas, it was a very big deal. They still come with their own birth certificates, or, in Emerson's doll's case, her "China papers".

Make-Your-Own-Pizza night

Helping Grammy play the piano.

Playing "sneak around behind the chair and scare Grammy".

Daily adventure walks.

Izzy took Dane and Joel "adventuring" by himself one day, and they were gone for over 3 hours. At one point they came to a creek, and being too tired to walk around it, Izzy took off his shoes and just carried the boys across. I'm sure they hated that. ;)

Baby Laurel holding

Beauty parlor time. Emerson and Adrienne painted "rainbow toes",

Brandon had his long luxurious locks straightened with a flat iron.

Looking through old family photo albums with Grandma Helen.

Rearranging GranDoug's wood pile. Then the next day, re-rearranging the wood pile to its' former glory.

Smearing Mentholatum on our face and declaring “this make-up is too stinky.”

Oh wait, that was just Harper. And I don't have a picture of that one.

Catching the Many Faces of Uriah (who smelled suspiciously of Grandma Helen's perfume most of the time) on top of the dinner table one night.
I want to squish this face.
More to come from Christmas 2011! I'm hoping to be done blogging about Christmas by MLK Day (or by the time I put my Christmas tree away).

Christmas Morning 2011

I hope you and your family had a very Merry Christmas! I am so far behind on blogging I may never catch up. The Christmas trees are still in my pantry, and I still have a houseful of laundry, cement dust, half-done flooring, and children. But I needed to take a little break and blog for a bit, so I'm going to spend the next week or two on the blog catching up on Christmas and the 500 pictures that go with it.

We kicked off our Christmas with Brandon participating in FIVE candlelight Christmas Eve services at church, starting with one on the 23^rd. All six of us went the afternoon on Christmas Eve, and Dane got to read part of the Christmas story in service while I spent the hour wrestling with Harper and trying to keep the kids from setting the chairs on fire with their candles. Wrestling match and fire hazards aside, I love Christmas Eve services at our church. Who am I kidding? I love pretty much everything about our church. Especially the hot high school youth minister. ;)

Christmas morning was spent at our little house, with it’s floorless living room and tiny trees. I justified not putting up the big tree this year because I wasn’t sure exactly when the repair work would start, and I didn’t want the possibility of having to put our big tree and all of the decorations away before Christmas. So we had sad little small trees, and I missed my big tree and all the pretty lights a lot this year. In hindsight, since Harper spent most of her waking moments disassembling and/or eating ornaments, it was probably best that she had a relatively limited selection this year.

Anyhoo. Chrismas morning.

Does everyone make their kids wait on the stairs until just the precise moment that you want them to come down? My kids aren’t real big fans of this practice.

And no, we don’t have cute-sy matching Christmas pajamas that our kids open for the first time on Christmas Eve so they have something cute to wear when they unwrap gifts. Their cheap mommy doesn’t want to buy 4 new sets of pj’s when they have PLENTY of pajamas to wear.

Santa surprised the girls with a princess tent filled with baby doll stuff,

and the boys got jerseys and a Nintendo DS.

Last year the boys also got Nintendo DS’s, but Aidan’s had been a first generation model that Santa had scored on the cheap, and it broke a few months ago. Santa utilized Craigslist again this year, but he got a newer model in much better condition this go around. They have LOVED each having their own, and we have LOVED not hearing them fight over the single DS. Christmas joy abounds.

The girls also benefited from impulse-purchase Princess shirts in their stocking, and they were a big hit on Christmas morning.

I want to apologize in advance for everything about this picture:

The pantless child, the giant Tinkerbell, the pose, the expression on her face. You can go ahead and start praying for Future 15-year old Harper.

A few hours later, we loaded up the van until nothing else would possibly fit into it, and we headed up to Ft. Worth to see Brandon’s family for a few days. More to come on that later.

Bringing Gifts to the Naughty List

...since 2003

Merry Christmas from our sleigh to yours!

My Favorite Christmas Tradition, 2011 Edition

This morning we finally got to participate in what has become my favorite thing we do as a family at Christmas time: Heifer International shopping. We started this last year with our kids as a way to involve them in giving to others, and to help them understand that since Christmas is about celebrating Jesus, one of the ways we can do that is to help others and give to others. How do we decide how much to give? Simple- we match dollar for dollar what Santa spends on our family. This also helps Santa to be more wise and thoughtful about each gift that is given to our children, and helps him to avoid spontaneous and unplanned purchases. Santa sometimes needs this reminder of what the Christmas season is all about. It’s very easy to get distracted, and sometimes Santa needs a little reality check. (And we get to buy things like water buffalos!)

Like we did last year, we all sat at the table this morning with a stack of $1 and $5 bills, and a Heifer International catalog.

The kids loved learning about what different animals can do for a family in a different part of the world. The debated, did a little math, and made deals with each other, and finally settled on what they were going to buy.

Harper used her portion to get bunnies for a family.

Three bunnies apparently have “fertilization” purposes for certain crops, and multiply like, well, rabbits. She was pretty excited about it, and probably thinks she’s getting bunnies for Christmas.

Emerson wanted a cow, so she bought a share of a cow, and a share of a sheep.

The cows provide plenty of milk and cheese for a family, with plenty left over to sell. The sheep provide wool and milk as well.

Dane was all about the budgeting. He spread his portion out to get a share of a water buffalo, a share of a sheep, some baby chicks, and plant seedlings.

Water buffalos are used for sowing fields and also for milk. The chicks are given as a lot (10-50), and should provide lots of protein in the form of eggs and, well, chicken.

Aidan’s shopping theme was “things that can fly”, and he picked out geese, chicks, and bees.

Geese are used on small farms for their eggs, and the bees help pollinate crops and provide honey to sell to others.

We love sitting together and doing this every year, and we hope it's teaching our children to think of ways they can celebrate Jesus by help others.