the 9 days of Christmas....

Our Christmas celebrations started the day after Thanksgiving and will have lasted through the whole month December and into January. We've had a great time. Highlights included the girls dancing in the Nutcracker, sleighrides, many parties (especially at the Peters) and a surprise visit from Santa on Christmas Eve. We also started a new tradition this year of wrapping our living room so that the kids couldn't see into it on Christmas morning.

We're finishing the season off now with our 9 days of Christmas. Shawn has taken the rest of the year off so that his vacation is as long as the girls. In a lovely box on our kitchen table sits 9 envelopes- one for each day of our vacation starting the day after Christmas. Each day we get to do something totally fun as a family. So far we've gone sledding, played games, rented movies and today's activity is a trip to the movies. We've got another 5 great activites planned for the rest of our vacation as well. We hope you are all having a great vacation as well.

update: so we've been sledding, to the movies, played tons of games, rented movies, rented wii games and been to dinner. We still have a couple things to do that I can't say yet........

A Labor of Love

It all started innocently enough in September. A group of friends and I got together to scrapbook and started talking Christmas gifts. We each wanted to create special presents for our children's grandparents. We decided that it would be a lot of fun to make special cookbooks with pictures of our children, favorite family recipes, and thoughts/quotes from our kids.

We started with the plain white binders you see here and ended with individual books, unique and special for each set of Grandparents. Naively, we thought it would take 5-6 hours per book. It took many, many more hours than that, and a lot of help from Shawn, who took all the pictures and wrote all the recipes. I'd love to say that all 3 books were perfect, but they were all uniquely flawed. Hopefully they are well loved by all 3 sets of grandparents, because by the time we were done, it was really hard to give them up. It was a lot of fun to make them, and I've actually already have the plans for next years Christmas gift- which I'll start in January so it's done well before mid December :)

3 Little Maids

In 1st Grade I was in my schools Christmas musical. It was a ton of fun. I wanted to be one of the 3 Little Maids in Santa Land. They reminded me of mermaids and they got to song a great song. Instead, I was one of the bakers. I got to hold a huge card board/aluminum foil Hersey Kiss, but I still had a longing to be one of the 3 Little Maids. Many years have passed and then today, I looked at our three beautiful daughters in their beautiful dresses and remembered the 3 Little Maids.

How lucky we are that Shawn's mom, Kathy, makes our girls such beautiful dresses each Christmas. It's a wonderful tradition and means so much to all of us as we anxiously wait each year for the dresses to arrive. She has never dissappointed us and really continues to out do herself each year. Each of our girls feels so special to know that their Granma spent so many hours working out their special dress each year. I can't say enough good things about Shawn's mom. We're so lucky to have her. :)

Getting Ready for Christmas

There's just so much to do this time of year- especially when it snows. We were very concerned that we wouldn't be able to cut down our own tree this year because of snow.

We were very glad to be able to cut our own down in the end. It was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed it.

SNOW DAYS!!!!

Monday the news started all the ominous reports about the up coming blizzard. I wasn't to concerned until the blizzard watch became a blizzard warning a good 15 hours before the storm was going to hit. So, Monday afternoon we conquered all of our errands and our home was well stocked. Tuesday started out innocently enough, but by 3 o'clock or so, the wind was really starting to get strong. By 9 p.m. the storm was raging and school was cancelled for all 5 of us. What do you do then? Why plan a great day full of all of our favorite activities. We had a huge breakfast, played in the snow (when the wind was taking a break. After the picture by the ornaments, the winds picked back up and the little gold one is buried), watched a movie and had pizza.

The fun continued this morning when the school district had a 2 hour delay. This meant that C and E didn't have to be at school until 10 and that Lily and I had the day off. Shawn of course didn't get today off which was just fine with us as we were all able to bring him doughnuts and balloons at work to celebrate his birthday. So, we'll finish up his birthday with a concert at both C's and E's schools, a nice dinner and a tasty surprise dessert.

It's been a lot of fun the last couple of days. I hope you are having fun as well!

Geography Bee

Thursday was an exciting day for Emily as she partook in her school geography bee. This year over 150 students tried out for the Bee, and 27 qualified for it. Emily made it all the way to the championship round- where she qualified by knowing that Australia is the continent associated with eculyptus. she was the only student to answer this question correctly and we were very proud of her. In the end, she came in 6th. We're all so very proud of her- Go Em!!!!!

Building a Home

We build a very special Home each year- one that wouldn't withstand even the smallest of storms, but is always a lot of fun. We've done it as a family for as long as i can remember, but the last few years, we've done it with our daughters' youth group. It's been very nice to have Em go into youth group as Charlie has come out so that we can continue this Tradition. hopefully her youth group will keep doing it for the next few years... then we'll be on our own again.

Christmas in the NW

As our town continues to celebrate for the holidays, we continue to attend great celebrations. On Tuesday night, we attended Christmas in the NW. This celebration is probably the largest one that our town holds for as part of Christmas in the City, and we simply were not able to attend all of it. We were able to go fishing for prizes, see Mr. and Mrs. Claus, and meet a lot of great animals, from Reindeer in training to furry sheep and adorable baby goats. Lily was incredibly happy to meet Scoopy, the ice cream cone mascot of her favorite burger place. We had a ton of fun, and I am so glad to have such great daughters- who put up with their mom begging for the pics with Santa. :)