It all started with the yummy pancake breakfast and leisurely morning I mentioned in my December 23 post. Then Jim got a call into work and left about 10 AM. The kids and I did some house chores and enjoyed laying low. He called around 1 PM to say that he had no idea when he would be home – bummer. We proceeded without him.

The kids and I had a yummy pot roast, potatoes, mixed veggies, french bread, and fresh fruit cups dinner together around 3:30.

Then we got dressed and ready to go to church. Our service was at 5 PM this year, and it’s about a 45 minute trip, so this is about 4:15 PM.

We were a little late to service but it was wonderful. We came home and the kids each had one Christmas cookie and milk before bed. At our house, it’s not some fictitious home intruder who eats the cookies. 🙂

Then the kids noticed something strange… their stockings had been filled with new pajamas to wear to bed on Christmas Eve. I hope to make this a new tradition!

Another new tradition is Haley wearing her beautiful pendant that Jim gave her last year. I got a shorter chain and she looked beautiful wearing it that night.

 

Jim got home around 10 PM and was very, very sick. He ate a little, drank lots of water, and went to bed.

December 23 we went to my parents’ house to exchange gifts and see my grandma and my cousin who was visiting from out of town. The kids were so excited for their first gift opening of the season.

JT’s special gift was a Craftsman tool box full of real tools. And I mean FULL. He is looking forward to completing many projects with Dad and Grandpa using them. I told him that I don’t know any other four-year-olds with a Craftsman tool set.

Both kids got stick horses and they were a big hit. Correction: they are a big hit. They ride them all over the house!

Haley enjoyed eating her dessert with Ma-Maw at Uncle David and Aunt Linda’s house… and seeing Hosanna, her little cousin. JT enjoyed petting the dog, Cherry.

We got back to my parents’ house and put the kids in pajamas. Haley’s pajamas have a special story: my mom made her two pairs of pajama pants out of fabric that she used to make me nightgowns over twenty-five years ago! She also made both kids slippers. They laughed so hard falling all over the tile floor in their soft slippers.

The next morning, Jim made us all pancakes to try out one of his gifts: homemade pancake syrups. We tried strawberry first. It was very good!

There’s one more post after this about Advent… click “older posts” below.

It all started with an idea for a fabric Advent calendar that I could reuse every year. Twenty dollars in fabric and thirty hours later, I was done. (Ugh!) I hand cut and hand stitched every number, hand stitched on every pocket, and hand stitched the quilt border. But it’s done and I like it!I filled the pockets with Bible verses, Christmas carols, and activities for each day.

The activities were simple enough. This one is “picnic lunch by the fire.”

Of course, we made Christmas cookies: sugar and gingersnap. Haley and JT took turns rolling and cutting.

Then we had an assembly line: JT scooped, I rolled, and Haley rolled in sugar.

We made the dough in the morning and baked them after lunch. We frosted after dinner. It was an all day affair!

The kids didn’t eat good dinners that night so, unfortunately, they had to wait until the next day to eat their cookies. (Yes. I’m just that firm.) But they were oh so good the next day, too!

The kids decorated Christmas ornaments for their two great-grandmothers.

We also opened an Advent calendar from Aunt Gena. It fit a frame I have in the house so I took out the chalkboard and hung the Advent calendar so curious fingers wouldn’t open the doors early. 🙂 Here we are on Christmas Eve, all twenty-four done!

Today we woke up to snow! Which was great, because it was my first day off for winter break and we were all healthy with zero plans… a wonderful start to the vacation. We had also made paper snowflakes on Sunday and had watched flurries all weekend. The kids were so excited!

I posted this on Facebook too, but seriously, I get asked from time to time what color my eyes are because they are pretty dark. (They are blue.) But I never, ever get asked what color my kids’ eyes are. People comment often on Haley’s big blue eyes, but mostly people overlook JT’s. I’m not sure why – check these out!

Anyway, we built a snowman in the back yard (learned my lesson from last year’s knocked-over snowman in the front).

Then we walked to our park and the kids decided to do the slide. Oh, how I wish I had been prepared with video mode. Haley thought this was the funniest thing ever. When they landed there was a brief pause and I thought, Oh no! But Haley started in with this giant belly laugh and could barely get up she was laughing so hard. JT chimed in once he realized no one was hurt.

Of course, Haley wanted to do it again, right away. Look at that air! I guess wet slides and snow pants make for a low viscosity. I cut them off after three trips down because I thought for sure I was playing with fire. We ended on a high note with no tears and went home for lunch. It was a wonderful first day off!

p.s. I cannot stop smiling when I see this last picture of Haley. She was positively in stitches!

We hosted a birthday breakfast for Jim’s dad last weekend. The kids were super excited to see their cousin Travis again. They both want to hold him and cuddle him and basically smother him while he’s here. But he’s also growing up and able to do some things… like lay on his tummy and look at the nativity while JT and Haley give him the grand tour.

 

We came back and made hot cocoa. I saw idea on Pinterest and it totally worked… I froze leftover whipped cream on a cookie sheet and then used cookie cutters to make shapes for the hot cocoa. So fun.

JT, Haley, and Aunt Jennifer worked on a puzzle while they drank hot cocoa. Such a fun morning!

…well, you know the rest. Okay, so I wasn’t going to decorate until December 1st, but then I took a look at the weekend’s schedule and decided I’d better go for it. Haley spent ten minutes playing with garland and then proclaimed she was “all done with Christmas.” But JT helped out and was a great tree branch fluffer.

 

And then both kids got the standard December cold. JT coughed and coughed and coughed, and Haley’s temperature went up to 103. It’s a good thing Jim was home, because she camped out on him and wouldn’t move. She slept a lot and felt much better the next day.

Meanwhile, I saved a project from last year that we completed this week. JT carefully cut out all of the pieces to a Nativity scene to play with. Haley surprised me by showing me that she can cut, too. I had no idea! Where she learned, I don’t know.

We had plans to go to Snowflake Lane in Bellevue with our friends but got rained out. Instead, we had dinner at our house, watched A Charlie Brown Christmas, and decorated reindeer cookies.

I had been trying to figure out when to arrange for some family photos for our Christmas card but just couldn’t manage it. Between shorter daylight hours, Jim’s work schedule, busy weekends, and napping children, we hadn’t made it work. Finally I met them at the lake during my lunch time at work so we could snap a few shots on the tripod.

There are about fifteen packages from Amazon stacked up in my guest room… the cards are in the mail… there are sugar cookies in the jar… life is good! 

p.s. And this picture (and a few others on this page) are from my new phone… which I am in love with… so far, I would highly recommend the HTC Droid DNA. 🙂

Lots of people have been posting things they’re thankful for every day on Facebook. It’s nice, but… I try to be thankful every day, for the not-so-great things too, and I just don’t need to tell everyone about it. (I feel this way about lots of holidays: Veteran’s Day? Thank one in person, don’t post a photo of an aircraft carrier on your Facebook wall and feel good about yourself.) Stepping off my soap box now.

In the past three days, we drove almost 300 miles and were never more than an hour from home. Our kids have fallen asleep in the car four times and have eaten about four times as many treats as normal. While it was wonderful and we had a great time, I am ready for normalcy. Also, this year was also completely nontraditional. Usually at this point I have all of my Christmas shopping done, wrapped, and under the tree because my house is decorated too. And my cards are in the mail. This year I rebelled: I didn’t go shopping. Not at all. Forget putting the cards in the mail, I don’t even have our picture done yet. But a full week of November is leftover after Thanksgiving, and I think five weeks of Christmas is too much. I decided to wait until December 1st to decorate, put up my freshly made Advent Calendar that I am desperately trying to finish, and start playing Christmas music. (What was that about a soap box? Onto the good stuff.)

These pictures posted in backward order and it is a lot of work to rearrange them. Let’s be nontraditional again. Starting with today… we had a lovely prime rib dinner at Jim’s parent’s house. Before that, we watched Alabama send Auburn home with a lovely 49-0 score at final. Before that, we had family pictures taken. Haley and JT had a great time playing with their cousin Travis.

Grandpa and Travis

Uncle Jim snuggle time

On Friday, we went to a friend’s house for Apple Cup and we extremely embarrassed, along with half the state, to watch the Huskies hand the game over to WSU, a team which could have been beat by my high school team this year. The kids didn’t notice, though: they were having too much fun wearing Husky tattoos, eating Hostess treats, and running like maniacs around the house.

Thursday, the kids helped me make some yummy things for Thanksgiving dinner. I contributed the pumpkin cheesecake, cranberry relish, apple pie, and sweet potatoes. Here are my two sweet potatoes. 🙂

My mom and mother-in-law cooked and made it a wonderful family meal. Thanks Moms!

The kids played puzzles with Grandpa and got to end the night with a Curious George before bed. Grandpa Cole thought it would be nice if they used headphones so the rest of us wouldn’t have to listen to Curious George too. Haley’s headphones were a little big so he put folded socks in between… too funny. She didn’t mind, as long as she got to watch the show.

Wednesday night we went to Thanksgiving Eve service at our church. It was great… no picture, which is too bad because Haley’s dress was adorable. We did spend some time reading The First Thanksgiving by Jean Craighead George this week, and talking about the meaning of the holiday.

But it all began on Tuesday, with JT’s Thanksgiving Feast at preschool. Haley and I went (seriously, that girl hasn’t gotten a good nap all week) and had a wonderful time feasting and listening to a few songs that the class sang for us. The kids also got to each bring home a balloon, which gave us hours of fun and minutes of tears and arguing for the rest of the week.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The weather feels, well, a little Novemberish.We have moved our activities to mostly inside, and we miss the outdoors. But we’ve found some ways to stay busy. For instance, JT is becoming an actual help in the kitchen. He is suddenly proficient in things that really do save me time, instead of causing more work to teach him how to do it, which is how I’ve spent the last two years. It’s nice to see the pay off! We made pita pizzas the other night for dinner, and both kids built their own pizzas.

 

 Then JT chopped the fruit for the salad while Haley tossed it all together. They make a good team.

Our pita pizzas – yum!

We’ve also brought back out the “rainy day toys,” like puzzles. Low and behold, Haley can do age appropriate puzzles just fine. I hadn’t seen her sit still long enough to do one!

One night this week, I had a great idea. I built a fort for the kids as a surprise, and they got to watch Ratatouille on their sleeping bags inside it. So fun!

A few random things… Haley’s Vans from cousin Alicia finally fit, and they are adorable.

JT is now fully capable of taking the mail out. I can see the mailbox from our front door (I’m standing in the doorway taking this picture), so I stay inside where it’s warm and he gets to burn some energy running there and back. Speaking of energy, I don’t know what we’re going to do with all his boy energy all winter long. Thank goodness for preschool… the other day I assigned him five sets of bear crawls up and down the stairs just to get some peace!

And finally, our spider. We’ve been watching this spider since early September. It has a huge, beautiful web right outside our front door. (Like, if you’re tall enough you might get some in your hair…) We check it often. We’ve seen it catch bugs, eat bugs, and fix the web. Then we watched Charlotte’s Web and the kids are practically proud of the spider. We’re waiting for him to hibernate, but he must do very well on our porch because it’s getting cold and he’s still there. JT and I zoomed way in on this picture to see his markings and fuzzy legs.

I’m not sure what happened, but I missed posting some October pictures from my dad’s birthday. We came, we ate, we celebrated!

Jim has a new schedule at work, and for the first time in four years he was off and home on a Saturday. It was very exciting. We went to workout as a family (first time in 11 months) and came home to watch football. Our friends the Bonnells came over for the big Alabama-LSU game and dinner. I made Game Day Chili and banana bread and Blockbuster Cookies, and Katie brought fresh fruit and drinks, and we had a fabulous time. We made sure the whole family had spirit by loaning out our Bama shirts too!

We looked pretty cheery during half time, but things got serious in the fourth quarter. I don’t think Jim moved from this spot until Alabama scored to win in the last minute of the game. Talk about a nail biter.

Then we spontaneously decided to put the kids to bed and watch a movie… so we made a make shift crib for Carson by moving furniture in our guest room. Nothing like good child flexibility to let the parents enjoy the evening!