Merry Christmas!

 

Christmas Eve PJs—puppies, dinosaurs, grinches, and plaid

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas

Ladybug Girl figures

Sunglasses

Funny socks

Fancy mechanical pencils

Christmas dinner with the china, silver, and advent wreath

Merry Christmas!!!

Christmas Eve

We are so grateful to be celebrating the birth of Jesus.  We don't often have everyone healthy at Christmas, and we don't this year either, but we are here together and glad to have that.  I took the healthy kids to church this morning and Justin took the candle light service with them this evening.  Miss Ellie is quite disappointed to be home, but her fever isn't too high--it may well be the cold that Katie had last week that caused a short lived fever for her too.

 Our December has been full of Advent candles, menorah lighting, Christmas parties,

visiting a reenactment of Bethlehem,

attending a parade,

reading through the prophecy if Isaiah (plus drawing it), and visiting family in Ohio and Kentucky. 

 We made a trip to the zoo on a bright sunny day,

 and we saw Santa at the mall.

We have a turkey awaiting baking and all the fixings, the pies are made, and the presents are wrapped.  Tonight we sing Come Thou Long Expected Jesus, both for Christmas morning and for the return of Jesus to come again.  They will open their Christmas PJs tonight, read The Night Before Christmas and from the book of Luke, open the last of the drawers in our Advent box, and tuck in children with dreams of sugar plumbs.

Merry Christmas to you!  May you find joy, peace, and hope this Christmas.
Kristy

Christmas Here

We had a nice visit with my parents and sister before Christmas.  While we were away, Gabby began to run a low grade fever off and on.  She was tired, but made it through.  We got home on Friday and tucked her and Ellie in to bed, both a little on the sick side.  We were awoken early on Christmas Eve morning, to hear Gabby cry on her way to the bathroom.  I assumed an upset tummy, but she said she had pain in her chest.  After a few quick questions, we decided it was about her lung and not her heart.  She was breathing okay, so Justin sat with her while I started the process to find an urgent care that accepted our insurance, and was open.  No one was at that hour.  We kept a watchful eye, and I left with her to arrive just before the clinic opened.

We were seen quickly--such a blessing!  No flu, but the PA we saw suspected pneumonia and ordered an x-ray.  We were told it was hazy, so we got her prescription for an antibiotic and we went on our way.  Grateful.

Poor Ellie has spent the past day getting more sick though.  Justin set an alarm to get up and check children in the night, as he had the night before, but before it went off I heard Ellie thrashing.  I found her with a slight fever, but very agitated.  In the time I checked on Gabby and got her some medicine to reduce her fever, her temperature had shot up three and a half more degrees.  We fought to bring the fever down with cold compresses, then we finally tried a different fever reducer, as nothing else we did was bringing her temperature down.

The other children, not knowing how ill she had been in the night, woke her with excitement for Christmas morning.  She perked up a bit for presents, but slept through breakfast and stockings.  She has had two more rounds of the higher than we like fevers, so that's been Christmas here.

We are so grateful their illnesses have not needed hospital stays, but it has been a bit of a melancholy Christmas here.  We had plans to have our turkey on Saturday, go to a candle light service, worship with our church on Christmas, and visit with some friends.  Things had to be shifted, including a grocery trip on Christmas Eve, since our turkey wasn't baked and we would be home all day on Christmas, where I oscillated between such gratitude that Gabby was well enough to skip the ER and being upset for the change in plans, which culminated when I gashed my finger on the cart as I was moving my things to the conveyor belt.  I don't even know how I did it, but it stings and doesn't want to close up, an aggravation and pain on top of the other things.  The meringue on my pies went flat.  It hurts to wash the dishes.  I haven't slept through the night in days.  But in the scheme of things, we are beyond blessed.  We are safe; we are together; we have medicine and clean water; we have food to eat.  We were even able to give our children presents, as we celebrate the birth of the Jesus who came to save us from this fallen world, where kids get sick.

Christmas Eve

I hope that you are all enjoying a wonderful Christmas time with your families and friends.  Our weather has been so unseasonably warm, as it has been across much of the country.  I must admit I don't remember ever having to take shelter for a tornado warning on the 23rd of December before!

We opted to keep our Advent a little less Christmas this year, and wait to do most of our Christmas things this week, with Justin off work.  We got out our Advent box, nativity, and Advent wreath at the beginning of December, but we didn't put up our tree until last week (this cut down on saying no to the toddler and keeps it special still). This week we've been baking and preparing for our Christmas celebration.

I hope that you all have a peaceful and joyous Christmas!  And just because it reminds me of my Daddy, Happy Christmas Eve Day!

December Here

The third week of Advent is here, and the busy-ness of outside schedules is slowing down, with AHG wrapped up until the New Year, our tutorial and church's women's ministries are wrapping this week.  There are several family and church things to help us enjoy the season in the next ten days though!

We've finished up the first half of our school year, according to our required 180 days, but we're still chugging along through the end of this week, until Justin is able to be off with us.  We'll actually reach our 100th day of school tomorrow.

Gabby presented her robot (Crabby--a play on it's crab walking style and her name) at the AHG Christmas party, finishing off her robotics badge.

Nate has been learning graphing and subtraction in math.  Our book often uses manipulatives to introduce new concepts.  He (and his sisters who helped him dispose of the tools after the lesson), were very disappointed to come upon a lesson that required graphing the number of colored candies in a bag.

Ellie is our silly toddler.  She has been playing dress up, hosting tea parties for her dolls, and coloring using pointillism.

We've visited with a Santa and took a trip to the zoo yesterday, with some unseasonably warm temperatures.

I'm in the middle of making Christmas PJ's for the kids, wrapping presents, and reading a couple of books I was chosen to join the launch teams for.  They deserve their own posts at some point, but I'm reading: Choose Joy and Raising Grateful Kids*  I've also joined the board of our local AHG troop.  Next fall I'll take over the treasurer's position as well.

We hope you are having a joyous (and maybe a little silly) Christmas season.

*(I don't get anything from those links, nor will I be paid for reviews, though I did get complimentary copies to read, and some small gifts for being a part of the groups)

Our Christmas

We had a more solitary Christmas than we had intended.  We were able to visit with my parents and sister the last weekend of advent, with plan of my parents coming down to see us on Christmas Day--due to illness we weren't seeing Justin's parents at Christmas, though we did visit with them at Thanksgiving.

The baking was done and the groceries all purchased, but Kate had a fever pop up.  She and Ellie had a cold before, but it seems that she picked up the flu while we were away.  The next day Nate had a fever too.  So Christmas left us in quarantine!

Thankfully the kids didn't feel poorly, despite their fevers.

 
They opened their pajamas on Christmas Eve.

 
We celebrated with gift opening and baked breads in the morning--orange nut, chocolate chip cranberry, and cinnamon rolls (from a recipe that a fellow teacher gave me when I was still teaching).

 
A little after noon we had a full turkey dinner, with all the trimmings, with our Christ candle lit.

 
In the afternoon we opened the presents from my in-laws for the children and had left overs for dinner.

It was quiet, but I was so grateful that for our family a case of the flu doesn't lead us to fears of ER visits and hospital stays.  Our children are healthy.  They are here.  With full tummies and presents to boot.  We had a very blessed Christmas!

Tree

It's that time of year.  We put up the tree with pretty lights, and shiny ornaments and tell the little ones not to touch it.  I knew that Ellie would be the most challenging of the children at their one year Christmas.  She's always busy and also has more hours to get into things, since she sleeps a couple of hours less a day than the others did at her age.

We started with just the tree and lights.  After she was able to not knock it over for a few days, we added our ornaments.  True to my expectations, the bottom third of the tree is quickly being emptied as we have begun to move the ornaments she removes.

It was Ellie's turn to put the angel on the top of the tree this year.

I think she likes the tree!

A quote I read on FaceBook this week: They put a big tree in the middle of the living room and said "don't touch." Didn't work in the Garden of Eden and it's not gonna work here. 🌲 -the Honest Toddler

Friday Funnies--Santa

Kate: That's Santa Claus

Nate: No! It's Santa.

Kate: Claus is like his last name--Santa Claus.

Nate: No, it's just SANTA!

*     *     *     *     *

The kids were talking about Santa over lunch.  At this point Kate knows the truth about Santa and we’ve told Gabby too (thanks to her sister spilling the beans, but I think she still wants to believe enough that she still wobbles in this), so only Nate completely believes the jolly man in red delivers presents.  They were discussing where to leave the milk and cookies.

Gabby: Should we leave him some vegetables?

Nate: We should leave him a peanut butter sandwich!

*To a healthy and well filled Santa!*

Broken Toes, Cadbury Eggs, and Christmas

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

We managed to have a pretty good one despite me falling down the stairs and damaging my big toe (I think braking it).

Evidently Santa got his holidays mixed up because I got Cadbury Eggs in my stocking.  Or the stores are just crazy enough to run Christmas/New Years/Valentine's Day/Easter all together.  Say it ain't so!

Oh well, I got Cadbury Eggs.

The girls' favorite gift has been the doll house Justin and I made them.  Due to illness, it lacks a bit being finished, but they've been playing with it regularly, so we haven't taken it to finish it up yet.  The stairs and edging are waiting to go in though.

Justin built, painted, and stained the house, and I bought the furniture from a woman who used it as a child herself.  I papered, floored, and made mattresses and bed linens.  The girls were with me the day I picked the paper (and each actually chose the paper for 'her' own bedroom, not knowing what it was for).

Nate's favorite gift has been Duplo blocks.  My sister got him a set for his birthday and he enjoyed them so much he got more for Christmas.  My parents got him a large set of blocks and we got him a fire station set.  They have been used every day.

Here his men are putting out a fire in a house I built.

The kids favorite gift they all got were little foam dart guns.  Nate got a bigger one and the girls and Justin each got a smaller one for defense.

They like shooting at the walls to see them stick.

My favorite gift of the year was The Jesus Storybook Bible.  We've been reading from it every night.  I love the wording and the illustrations.  It is beautiful.  I'm not affiliated with the company and don't get any money from it, but I highly recommend this book--I caught it half off at LifeWay, which was a great price and I've been told they run that special quarterly or so.

Merry Christmas!

In on the Secret...

Kate was asking hard questions.  Questions about why Santa didn't give gifts to those who get Shoe Boxes and goats.  Why some children get so little and others so much.  So I took my curly headed oldest out on a date.

We bought our advent candles and then settled into a coffee shop, rather than the McDonald's she had her eye on, in hopes not to ruin any small children's Christmas dreams.  We talked about St. Nicholas.  She excitedly told me that she knew all about him and his coins down the chimney.

Then I asked her what happened when people got old.  First she answered, "They look different?" (ala Santa).  Then I asked what eventually happened.  A question formed on her face, "They die?"

Ah, yes.  St. Nicholas died a long, long time ago.  I explained that we use Santa to teach children about St. Nicholas and the giving of gifts.  She asked lots of questions and found out that all kinds of adults are in on the whole thing.

I was so glad I got to tell her, not some mean kid teasing her.  I'm trying to get her on board with keeping the littles in the dark until I can take them out for a hot cocoa and a cheese danish some day, when they are asking those hard questions.

I told her that I told my own little sister.  She asked if I knew better.  When I told her I did know, she was shocked.  Her Mama wasn't perfect as a little girl.  I told her I also upset Aunt Holly greatly, and I hoped she would do better than I did.  We'll see!

Christmas Card Shopping

My family has been using Shutterfly/Tiny Prints for many years for photo ordering.  They have good prices and it is always nice to have a package on the doorstep instead of waiting at the photo counter with little ones.  Two years ago, we chose photo cards from them for the first time--and they were wonderful.  We have never had so much positive feedback on a Christmas card before.  Of course our kids are adorable, but the quality on these cards heavy paper was great too.

The customer service was great on those cards too, as we moved not too long before I ordered them and I forgot to change the shipping address.  We were able to remedy it with the excellent service they provided and get our cards out for Christmas.

Since it is November, I thought I'd share their Christmas Cards collection with you too, so you can make an order!

Here are a few of my favorites:

Simple

Pretty

Informative

Fun colors!

Don't forget to check for special promotions they offer here.

*I am receiving a coupon code, in exchange for my promotion of Tiny Prints, but all the opinions are my own.*

Happy New Year

I guess I sorta got busy! I haven't written in quite awhile. I hope you had a Merry Christmas and are enjoying the New Year. We started back to our normal schedule yesterday. The professor was to be at work, so the littles and I went back on our school schedule. So now I can get caught up on all the writing I missed out on...well maybe some of it anyway!

We've done baking, visiting, sewing, shopping, baking, caroling, wrapping, and oh, did I mention baking?

The kiddos got some cute new PJs this year. These are a set from my parents that they modeled for me the other night. You might also be able to tell that both of the girls have had their hair trimmed. The girls adore long dresses and nightgowns. Gabby's brushes the top of her feet. It reminds me of Cindy Lou Who, and Nate has his 'Mergcy 'jammas. Covered in emergency vehicles, in honor of Aunt Holly.

Also in honor of Aunt Holly...

When we were little girls, we had some neighbors who we played with regularly. We enjoyed a lot of kickball games in our front yards, trick or treating together, and spent hours upon hours with them. The middle child was between Holly and me in age and owned a certain pair of slippers. They were 'bear claws,' fuzzy brown with plastic claws. As small children often are, Holly was scared of the claws, and she would run home anytime they came out. Of course, they were never brought out just to scare her off (ahem). Sorry Holly.

Anyway, that's why when I saw these on clearance...I just couldn't pass them up, so now Nate can scare his Auntie away. Maybe that won't work anymore though.