Me+SmartWool = HAPPY GAL

If you live anywhere that has weather you consider to be chilly, may I recommend SmartWool socks?  They are a luxury that I find to be worth every penny that they cost.  Try them and see if you agree.  The rest of holiday photos coming soon...

On to the Next House

In our Christmas travels, the Guild family was next on the itinerary.  We enjoyed a couple of days there, as well.  Never a dull moment with ten grandchildren!

Over the River...

We headed to Grammie and Grampie's house on the night of the 26th to celebrate with my family.  It was grand fun, and the boys amped up the energy level in that house a fair amount in the two days that we were there.

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