Christmas around the house

 I've already long since taken all the Christmas down and put up a little New years stuff (and I am about to gut the closets!), but I like to be able to look back on what I did the previous year here on the blog. Since last year was Christmas on STEROIDS, I wanted "Christmas lite" this year. It wasn't exactly lite with five trees, but you know. I did two trees in the living room - one silver and one gold. I can't seem to find the pic anymore, but it's on Instagram.

A few shots:

 These Santas were quite the score and I still LOVE this little piece of fencing! I need to get the NYE cards on it.

And the New Years mantle.

All things Christmas

Two days of EVERYTHING Christmas and I am ready to sit on the couch for a day now. (And then pack up all this stuff. I am ready for a clean house!)

Here we go:

 More snow! Goodness I LOVE this pic of them.

 Grant declared this the best Christmas present from God ever.

 gingerbread houses, aka eat all the candy. Jack refused to participate. We only do this because he used to INSIST and now he wont do it. Hmmmph.

Church. And Grant refusing to take a picture.

 Matching pajamas.

 And Grant refusing to take a picture.

 And presents.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas card photo

I have to say the Christmas card photos are getting easier every year. Grant is still a wild card but in general I can sit them down, shoot 200 photos (LOL!) and get on with life. I am not even sure which one I chose, because most of them were decent.  But the outtakes are fun for the blog, right?

 I love this one actually.

 Sam is marking grant down on the naughty list by this point.

Merry Christmas from all of us to all of you!

Christmas approaches

 Well, it's been quite the week here.  Last night it snowed a little. It's been two years since we really had a snowy winter, I am hoping this little bit of snow is the sign of good things to come. (We have been having horrible drought!)

 Sammi was COMPLETELY smitten with Santa Lucia at the Christmas parade last week, so first thing Monday while washing ninety loads of laundry I set out to make her a Flow'ret Bright winter crown.  It was hard work! She was completely enchanted by it and wanted to wear it to school, but after two days of hand work (which ended in cursing and hot glue), I had to say no for fear it would get wrecked.

I started feeling a bit ill by Tuesday morning but thought it was all the tedious hand sewing with my old eyes (I now wear one contact for close and one contact for far and too much close work can give me a headache).  But nope, but Tuesday night I was down for the count.  I spent four days puking, sweating, weak. TOTALLY awesome with a huge list of Christmas things to be done, right!?

 I will get a pic of her in it and upload the pic of her with Lucia, but I have to log in and out and in and out and email photos from my phone and on and on to blog anymore. Its really a big pita.

This morning the kids painted these ornaments I grabbed at target on a whim. We hadn't had a chance to make anything this year and I just love how gorgeous these turned out!

All that's left now are the gingerbread houses and a trip to church before Santa arrives, but now Sammi is down with the puke, so who knows how this will all turn out. Lucky me! LOL

Historic St Charles Christmas

 On Sunday afternoon we took the kids downtown for the Christmas parade and a visit with the reindeer.

 Hello there.

Sammi REALLY wanted to get the trading cards from all 45 (!!!) of the characters, so we spent a few hours chasing down as many as we could. We still ended up 10 short. (One we walked right by, oy). And now she is on about the special edition cards you can only get on Wednesday nights (one of which is the krampus). I am dead tired from hours of running miles around town to get them all though!  It is interesting to hear each of their stories and see all the costumes though. They are all really great actors and singers too!

 This was mother goose teaching her a Christmas rhyme.

 Frontier santa.

 The sugarplum fairy.

 Saint Nicholas.

 Civil war santa.

Virginia, from yes Virginia fame.

And the candy cane carol girls.

The costumes really are fantastic!

It's a super little event and I am committed to making sure we do go every year instead of on a whim like we usually do.

It's almost time for the sleigh bells, I have two more class parties then the kids are out of school for two weeks. Here's hoping some snow comes our way soon!