Celebrate

I really love to celebrate.  Probably not as much with huge crowds or really big parties but with fun traditions that we look forward to each year.  We've tweaked our celebration of Jesus' birth each year and will continue to do so, but we have some traditions that are great fun: Read the "Story of Christmas" and do that last Jesse Tree ornament, gifts for each of us (lovingly wrapped, see the photos), breakfast of Daddy's specialty pancakes, playtime together, and dinner with "spicy juice" followed by some birthday cake.

 Wrapped for me by my oldest.

 Wrapped for me by the littlest Guild

 Scavenger Hunt for their gift

 Scavenger Hunt: getting closer

 These boys love their daddy's pancakes!

 The master pancake maker at work

 A little goofy

 As normal as we get...

A few of my favorite memories from this year: Jonathan's absolute delight at preparing gifts for others and carefully wrapping them (three hours of wrapping is some focused wrapping!).  Caleb and Jonathan's excitement about the Jesse Tree and reading each night.  Caleb: "I wike the wights a wot."  

Lotta bit of Wrapping

Jonathan, Caleb and I had a marathon wrapping day on the 23rd.  We wrapped a gift for Daddy, for the grandmas and grandpas, for some cousins and aunts and uncles, and we had a little something for Bruce and Stacey that the boys picked out.  We enjoyed lunch with the Johnsons and Hairs on Christmas Eve so we got their little gifts ready first.  Jonathan wrapped a good portion of all of the gifts himself, but this one was one of my favorites.  He wrote "Too: Broos" before I realized what he was doing.  

The boys have loved looking at photo books made very creatively by Denise and Dave.  Caleb loves to look and remember the names of all of the folks that he sees only on occasion.

In Preparation

As we prepared for the celebration of Jesus' birth, we read each day and put an ornament on our Jesse Tree.  The "new" tradition started off a bit shaky, but by the end, the boys were begging to do the readings and put the ornaments on the tree.  From Genesis forward, God had a plan... what a sweet way to remember that Jesus was in that plan from the beginning.

Our nearly completed Jesse Tree

Run.......... and Stop

We have had a fun filled time as a family of four, with our extended families on both sides, and at a family wedding catching up with relatives whom we haven't seen in years.  However, we are tired and were more than happy to sleep in our own beds last night.

I have so many photos to post that I warned the hubby that blogging could take hours this week instead of minutes.  Caleb got a belated birthday gift that has photos too amusing not to post...

"Iron Man" costume

Fire Breath

Kids eat free at a local sandwich shop on Mondays, so last night we ventured out in the hideous weather for dinner.  Caleb was insistent upon wanting these chips instead of the customary, plain Sunchips.  The little dude ate half of the bag, saying, "I wike dese.  My mouf is just a wittle bit hot."  He did consume two full glasses of water to accompany the chips.

Looking at the Lights

We were sick off and on most of last week.  It was two days of sickness, one day of everyone being perfectly fine, two more days of sickness.  Yuck!  On one of the days that we were "perfectly fine" our good friends asked us to go walk around and look at lights.  It was a lovely evening and great times with our friends!

Carriage with Horses

Jonathan, Caleb and I have been reading about horse-drawn carriages in various books about the "time before cars".  After a bit of quiet the other day, I went to check and what did I see?  A carriage with some "horses" pulling it and two little Guild passengers.

After a bit they wanted a live horse instead of the dangling stuffed ones.  Guess who got to play that part?  You guessed it... one momma/horse coming right up.  Giddy-up!