Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was great!  By this time we not only had my mom and my brother Dan and my dad visiting, but Brad's brothers, Todd and Brian, and their dad, Harry were over for the evening.  And then Stacey arrived!  Stacey is my brother's girlfriend.  She flew in that night.

We all ate dinner together, and talked, and then we opened up some presents.  Here are some pictures of the kids opening theirs.  I thought it was really funny how all the grownups circled around the living room.  The only people you can't see are Harry and, of course, myself.  Unfortunately, there's some sort of blip on one of the pictures.  Not sure what caused that.

Here the kids are showing off the new Worms game for Wii.  I think that was the hit of the evening!

After presents, we had some dessert and then the kids got ready for bed and for Santa!  Santa was pretty good to us this Christmas!

The Elves Visit

In my family, we have a tradition of Santa's elves visiting the night before Christmas Eve.  They traditionally knock on the door at night and leave behind a small treat for everyone!

For some reason so far the elves have not visited us in this house.  But this year they did!  Grandma and Grandpa saw sparkles outside floating around, so the kids had to go check it out.  Not long after that, there was a knock at the front door, and here's what we found!

The kids got some snow/sand molds to make castles with!  Plus really big, beautiful candy canes!  There were even gifts for Mom and Dad and Uncle Danny.

 After the visit, Uncle Danny and the kids checked for elf prints in the snow:

Of course, the elves only visit if the kids finish their dinners..

Henry finished his, including the spinach--can you tell?

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Getting Ready for Christmas

Yes, it's January.  I know.  Here are some pictures from December, when we were getting ready for Christmas.  Some of these pictures are ones I couldn't show before because they have people's gifts in them!

In the middle of the month, we had a big snowstorm.  We ended up getting over 20 inches from that one storm here.  It made for a fun time in the yard.

Holly had a lot of fun helping Daddy shovel the walkway, and then using the sled in the yard and driveway!

One of the things the kids made for gifts this year was homemade glass ornaments.  We got the clear glass ball ornaments and dripped paint inside and swirled it around.  Then we wrote their names and the date on the bottom when they were dry. 

The kids also made homemade hot cocoa mix (it's extra yummy!), and Holly sewed bags out of pretty Christmas fabric for everyone.  I don't have a picture of that yet, but I should definitely post them when I do.  She did such an amazing job with her first sewing on the machine!  The bags turned out very nice, and everyone loves the cocoa (including ourselves!).

Getting back in the swing of things

It's been a long break from the blog for me.  I've been wanting to write, but honestly for a while there, I just didn't have the energy! 

We had a fantastic Christmas with family, even though most of us got a nasty bug during the holidays.  There were eight people in our smallish house, and the result was a kind of fun insanity.  Now that everyone's gone (sniff), the house feels so big and I have the decluttering bug, big time. 

I'm planning on posting lots of pictures of what we did over our holidays together.  Also, Santa brought us a pretty neat gift that will be a family project for us.  That will also be a series of blog posts!  At this point, I'm just needing to get back to blogging, one step at a time. 

Look for pictures soon!  (How does tomorrow sound?)