rewind to christmas

december began with a horrible cold for me, which set our christmas festivities back a few days. by the time i was out of bed and functioning, it was already a week into advent, and i felt christmas quickly slipping away! i was so looking forward to the "firsts" of celebrating christmas in our new house-- we didn't get to do everything i wanted, and some things that we started didn't really get finished... but it was a great month, and i pray that the significance of christmas and the birth of our Savior was further impressed upon the hearts of my children. oh yeah, and my computer died right after i got over my cold. hence the incredible lack of blogging during december... so here's a little christmas catch-up!

looking back at these pictures, it seems like the kids wore their christmas pajamas for the entire month of december! well.... we do homeschool, so there are lots of days that we stay in our pjs! ha! but good grief, they did get dressed most days. and those pajamas did get washed! :) picking out our tree was my first post-cold outing. i was so happy to be feeling like a normal person! the kids' ornaments this year were their initials that look like peppermints. here is sweet caroline taking in the moment when she put her ornament on the tree.
 
one of the new traditions that i was very excited about starting was truth in the tinsel, which is a little craft each day with a Bible reading centered on a different part of the nativity story. we began this by playing catch-up, which never bodes well. we didn't do this every day in december, but the kids loved the crafts every day that we did them. when we finished, we hung the ornaments in our school room window. here are the kids (on an actual cold day! look at the windows!) working on mary and elizabeth and their pregnant bellies. :)
 
we also continued our favorite jesse tree tradition, but i failed to get a single picture of the kids hanging ornaments on our jesse tree. :(

 one day i went into ethan's room, and i saw this set up in the middle of his floor. it made me smile.
 
he didn't move it for days. and then i'm pretty sure a sister knocked it over.

another christmas tradition at our house is getting out the train. daddy has as much fun with this as the kids do. :)


we had fun making christmas cookies with my mom again this year!

the kids loved sneaking cookie dough and icing the most, though....
 
caroline was so excited about having a matching christmas dress with her doll, eva... and when we got to church one sunday, karina had her doll in matching clothes too! i love watching these girls grow up together.
 
we celebrated christmas with my dad and grandma a little early. ethan was just a wee bit thrilled about opening these skates....
 
then we headed to celebrate with brian's aunts, uncles, and granddaddy on christmas eve eve. i love this picture of brian, jeff, and all the kids.
 
this was my favorite present to give this year. :)
 
before we knew it, christmas morning was here! we'd stayed up very very late getting the house ready for christmas dinner, but that did not stop our children from rising at the crack of dawn on christmas morning! here are some christmas hugs for a very tired daddy.
 
man, these kiddos are growing up quickly... love this yearly stocking picture!
 
stars for our ceiling!!! (and ummmm, these still aren't on their ceiling. woops!)

the girls were the joyful recipients of my goodwill jackpot finds. these have been perfect for the 1,278 littlest pet shop figures they now own.

ethan has caught the reading bug, and he was thrilled to get some easy readers for christmas. he is currently on book #4 of these treasure island easy reader classics, and the cliffhangers at the end of the books just make him want more.... i love it.

and then the big surprise...

this one of amelia may be my favorite from this christmas...

scoooooooters! ohhhh, they've been wanting scooters since we moved and they have been the only scooter-less kids on the block.
 
these were also goodwill finds, thanks to aunt kristie and her mama! i was so excited that our big christmas gifts were far from budget-busters! ('cause let's be honest... those new scooters end up looking used in a matter of weeks.)
 
and of course we could not skip singing happy birthday to Jesus!

christmas on a sunday made for a busy day, but oh what a blessing to gather with our brothers and sisters and celebrate the birth of Jesus! here are nana and pappy with all their grands after church. (wardrobes courtesy of nana.)

after church, we all gathered at our house for presents and dinner. cousin love :)

and here they go digging in to the stockings

ethan has been eyeing this star wars lego watch since our trip to legoland!

the best present of the day, in my opinion...

nana scores again with her gift for the guys... there were nerf bullets flying all over my house for the next hour.
 
nana and pappy's big gift for caroline and karina was an awesome melissa and doug easel! i highly recommend it.
 
i didn't get a chance to take very many pictures of our christmas dinner set-up.... this is totally understandable considering that we were still opening presents when we'd planned to be eatin dinner. and we hadn't really started dinner yet. no big deal except that we had some friends joining us for dinner. most of them knew we'd be running late because, well, they know brian's family, but i still hated to be running so late. in the end, we enjoyed a delicious dinner and precious fellowship with family and friends. we loved hosting christmas at our house this year! here's a quick shot i took of the table before we filled it with food.
 
the kids found some cans of fake snow in their stockings from nana, so the girls gave it a try after dinner. i think they had fun with it, but it was not the easiest to clean up.

so christmas is over... way over. it's always such a precious time of the year...

and then it's always so nice to get things back to normal! here we go, 2012!