It's over-Christmas Recap Edition 2008

The season, at least at my house, is over. I am in the military momma-put things back-in-order mode. And it is exhausting! Even though I de-junked rooms and closets there is no room for the amount of stuff we got. It was a good Christmas though.

Christmas Eve is always spent at my moms, eating lots of food, reading the birth of Christ and skits put on by the children.

Christmas morning was a chaos of paper, boxes, toys, clothes, video games and junk. The K's made out like bandits, again.

This year we hosted Christmas breakfast, much easier then Christmas dinner so I think I will make it a tradition. Along with breakfast came another round of present opening and family time.




We did one more round at my Grandmas and then we came home to shower and prepare stuffing for dinner. My bro & SIL held Christmas dinner. Man did I eat a lot!

We hit lots of movies over the last week. We saw Bolt, Bedtime Stories and Marley & Me. All great movies but I have more then had my share of popcorn. K3 is over-stimulated. Between the chaos of Christmas, sledding multiple days, late nights, early mornings and no structure he was done. Yesterday we had a down day, slept in, stayed in our PJ's, played with our new toys and ate left-overs. And early bedtime. We needed it.

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Anticipation

The time is quickly approaching. Is everybody ready? I think we just about are. Tomorrow is the prep day, cleaning, laundry and last minute baking. There are 2 more activities on the advent calendar, everything is wrapped and I hopefully made my last trip to Wal-Hell until after the chaos. Snow has fallen (and fallen and fallen) and Santa is making his last minute touches. We are in the final stretch.

Tomorrow night signifies my favorite part of the Holiday. Every year, since I was little, my family has a tradition of meeting together, eating yummy food and reading the birth of Christ from the Bible. It has started with my family of four to now adding spouses, grandchildren, aunts and Great-Grandmas. The kids perform skits, songs, etc. and it is such a sense of family. I love it.

Christmas morning we are hosting breakfast and I am playing around with table ideas. I considered using my new jars but with the chaos of our children I see nothing but broken glass so I am trying to play around with some things my momma has.

I hope everybody has a great Holiday, gets everything they want and are able to spend quality time with their families. Happy Holidays!

Snowman

Our advent activity for the day was to build a snowman. Only K3 was on board for this one:


The snow was too powdery so we had a hard time getting the sucker to form therefore that is why he is on the "short" side.


K3 was begging me to hurry up and take the picture because he needed to eat the carrot. I suggested he could have a new one from the fridge but nope, only the nose would do:


This morning we woke up to our poor little snowman covered in snow. :(

House Tour Christmas 2008

Even though I haven't officially signed up with any virtual tour I wanted to share some of my Holiday decorations:

First, start off with our tree. This is not a good picture but honestly this tree does not photograph well. My DH is big on "cutting our own" which requires the whole family traipsing off into the hills and after years of crying, fighting and throwing fits and not winning I have decided to suck it up and take the tree that will work. It's made it a much better experience for us all. Our tree is full of ornaments made by the children, ornaments given by G-ma and ornaments made by our Angel Grandma and now her husband:


Next on the stop is the nativity set that was made by my Great Aunt back when I was a little girl. My mom passed it down to me because it was one of those things I have always loved:


Here's my mantel with all my goodies:


Here's my new apothecary jar and some other fun things I bought this year at Robert's 50% off sale:


In the background is the stocking K1 made in 1st grade. Further on down the wall are ones made by K2 & K3.

To finish up- down the hall we have our cute little penguin to light the way and keep the monsters away. Isn't he cute?


Tomorrow kitchen, family room and K2 & K3's little trees.

Boy life has been busy around here! We are in the full-swing of the Holidays, doing lots of Holiday oriented activities, including baking and decorating cookies:


Making gingerbread houses:


Playing in the snow:


Taking care of broken Great-Grandmas:

And shoveling lots and lots of snow. And I must not forget the splits I did this morning on my way to take the kids to school. Quite impressive for an almost 40 year old who has never done splits before. Luckily the traffic is non-existent at 7:10 in the morning.

Things I am not keeping up on during the whirlwind of activities:

My roots

Cleaning

Laundary

Sleep

5k a$& challenge

Just one more week of school, I wish there was only one more week of work but luckily I have a boss who is allowing me to work from home 3 days a week during the Christmas Break.

I have decided to make the switch over to blogger so I am going to start making simultaneous posts. Here's the link to my "other" blog.

http://amyf4.wordpress.com/

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