Christmas!

We had such a wonderful, busy day!  So much to write about but it's time for me to go to  bed (work in the morning).  I just wanted to take a minute to post how thankful I am for our families and how blessed we are.  Happy Birthday, Jesus!  Merry Christmas, Everyone!

Santa's Elf

Christmas cards finally picked up today, and only spent about 2 hours at our house before being cheerily stuffed and merrily mailed!  Andrew helped, too!  Very happy to have that part done since we're getting really close to Christmas.  You don't want people thinking you forgot!

Santa's Elf came tonight and wrapped all of the kids' presents.  Now I just have to find our wrapping paper and finish everyone else's.  I've been so excited about Christmas this year! 

I hope it's wonderful for Andrew and we do a good job keeping the magic in it as much as remembering Jesus.  I'm challenged by both.  Maybe I'll have it down by the end, but will I forget how by next year?  Always the challenge with annual celebrations; like how the timing goes for all of the sides baking on Thanksgiving ;)


FOUR MORE DAYS TILL CHRISTMAS!!!!

Sing along

So I forgot my camera for Andrew's preschool Christmas sing-a-long Thursday.  The saddest thing I could think of was Ken coming home from work and asking to see pictures/video of it, but Thursday nights we don't see each other between shifts, so I didn't have to tell him (or see his face) that I didn't have it.  He did look on the camera when he got home, so I had to confirm that there were in fact no pictures or videos....  Hopefully I can get copies from someone else in his class.  I feel like such a bad mom and wife for that one :(
The kids were adorable singing and doing little hand motions to a couple songs.  You could tell they practiced and were so excited to sing with us!  Amber cooed at her big brother and clapped and bopped to the songs- super cute, too!
Oh, and they both have a snotty cold now... hoping that's gone by Christmas and Ken and I (or anyone else) don't get it.
ONE WEEK TILL CHRISTMAS!!!!

Decorating the Tree

Ken and Andrew braved the chilly air last Sunday to pick out our Christmas tree!  It's a beautiful 8 ft Douglas Fir (thank you 9 ft ceilings) and it is about as wide as it is tall  haha!  Ken said it's equilateral; I said it's chubby :)  Whatever it is, it's lovely and we had fun decorating it that night.  We put the Christmas music station on the TV (stop and think that we used to put records and 8 tracks on when we were kids...), told Andrew a million times to stop getting the ornaments out that we weren't putting on/use a hook/put it on a strong branch not on the tip of branch, and the whole time Amber could have cared less.  I subjected the family to a little video-recording while the TV played the most obscure songs it could find.  After I turned off the video, decorating went a little better and so did the music.  I'm a ginx, at least with the camera.
So, here are some photos (and yes I set up the timer for some family shots :p I like everyone to be there).

Amber helped unload the bin (she's in the fill & dump stage hehe)



We need one up dair, Dad.