Christmas!

Emily and Rachael in the Missionaries of Charity's Christmas pageant.

Sophie tries on Emily's home made apron.

All the kids helping Michael figure out how to shred paper.

Sophie and her favorite Santa gift.

All of us after Mass on Christmas eve.

We had a great Christmas here! The girls sang on Christmas eve; yes, I cried at "Ave Maria," and "O Holy night." Uncle Scotty spent the night in order to hear the morning squeals of kid-happiness. They were up at 5! Then, in the evening, our friends Melinda and Leo came over for dinner, and we had such a nice visit! The kids all played while we caught up. We missed my family, but thankfully we had the chance to "skype" everyone for a little while one afternoon. That rocks for keeping current! There are still remnants of gifts floating around here and there; mostly from Michael emptying new things to explore and play with. Now we're gearing up for tomorrow night's New Yrs. eve party!

Advent activity

Emily's nativity

St. Nicholas day

Our annual picture at the Christmas tree farm.

The girls singing at the Peabody with the children's choir

Getting ready for Christmas here! Of course December is completely packed with events, but it's been fun so far. The house is decorated, most of the crafty stuff is done (but not cleaned up yet..thus we're doing school at the kitchen table), Michael is doing the cutest stuff and we're all so enamored with him! AND, it is very hard to do school as we get closer to Christmas!!! The girls all want to be making something, wrapping something, or decorating something! Turns out my family won't be here after all for Christmas, but it's okay, they'll all be making their own family memories, as will we. As Bret gets older, I'm really embracing these holidays, because I know how fast things will be moving in the next several years. Happy Advent!

Start of the holidays

We celebrated Thanksgiving a week early this year. My sister, her family, and my parents came for about 2 days. We had the best time! The kids totally occupied each other, and they were happy and cute. We adults had lots of laughs and easy, effortless time spent together. Shannon and Fabrice even decided to come back for Christmas! Here at the house, we started making Jesse tree ornaments for the big Christmas countdown, and we've started making and buying gifts, so all is going well. Today we're putting together a baby Jesus cradle to fill with straw for each kind act during advent. We're going to focus this week on putting up one area of Christmas decorations each day, so the whole task isn't so overwhelming.