The past few weeks have been crazy, as usual. I don't know why I continue to be amazed by this. When Aly was three and I had only two children, I had a friend tell me that even though you think life will be easier once your kids start school, it only gets crazier. I should have listened. But it's a good crazy and I guess I should just embrace this as the new normal. Amidst all the busyness, time with my family continues to be the highlight for me. Her is a picture of the girls decorating the Christmas tree (As we were taking down the decorations today, I realized I went a little overboard decorating when we are going out of town for the holidays!) Notice Kate wearing the stocking ornament on her feet.
Here we are in front of the Christmas tree. We started the tradition in our family of watching Christmas movies with Hot chocolate and sleeping in front of the tree.
Here is Kate wearing her new pink boots while opening a gift. . . she's all about the footwear these days. The other day Chris caught Kate singing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" into the toilet bowl. It must have great acoustics down there. Of course, I wouldn't know because I've never sung into a toilet bowl. . . okay, so maybe I have, but I was cleaning it okay, not just hanging out there for fun!
Here's me with a couple of my presents. At the girl's school they had a "Penguinn Shoppe" where the kids could buy inexpensive gifts for their family members. It was so cute to see how excited they were to pick things out for us. I got a silk rose from Aly and a #1 Mom pen from Analise. Too cute. The rest of my life has been consumed with primary (of course), speaking in church, and cooking. I'm not a big baker, but for some reason this year I got sucked into 4 pumpkin pies, 3 pans of brownies, 2 batches of PB/Hershey kiss cookies, and a partridge in a pear tree. The insane thing is that it all got eaten.
Analise's class put on a play, "The Littlest Christmas Tree" and it was fun to watch. Analise got to be a cardinal. Analise continues to amaze me. She told me recently that she and her friends take turns saying a prayer on their food before they eat lunch. She is such a good example (well, most of the time.)
Aly sang fabulously in her Christmas Choral Concerts. She is a natural performer and didn't even get nervous when singing her solo in French. Aly is also loving being 8 years old and being able to attend Activity Days at church. Man! When did my little girl get so big? Literally - she has now started borrowing some of my clothes and we have the same sock size. Things are going to get really interesting when she starts hand-me-downing clothes to me. I'll get to be "hip" again. :)
And as for Chris, he has been working turbo time to finish this quarter and get our family set to go home for Christmas. Once his finals/papers/projects were all done he jumped right in to demolishing our garden, registering the van, updating the 72 hour kits, renewing the scouting charter, and helping me pack and clean up the house. In the past few days as we've been trying to prepare for the trek to Utah, we've discovered that a couple of lugnuts were missing on one of our tires, and today we discovered a leak in our hot water heater. It's crazy how these things always come about at the last minute, but I consider it a huge blessing that we discovered these things before we left so that we don't have to deal with losing a tire while crossing the mountains in the middle of the night and we won't come home to a soggy, sauna house. Wherever and however you will be spending your holidays, we hope that it is full of peace and joy. (That was my church talk topic - The Blessings of Peace - and it was very helpful for me to regain perspective during this busy time of year.) See you all in a few weeks!
Here we are in front of the Christmas tree. We started the tradition in our family of watching Christmas movies with Hot chocolate and sleeping in front of the tree.
Here is Kate wearing her new pink boots while opening a gift. . . she's all about the footwear these days. The other day Chris caught Kate singing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" into the toilet bowl. It must have great acoustics down there. Of course, I wouldn't know because I've never sung into a toilet bowl. . . okay, so maybe I have, but I was cleaning it okay, not just hanging out there for fun!
Here's me with a couple of my presents. At the girl's school they had a "Penguinn Shoppe" where the kids could buy inexpensive gifts for their family members. It was so cute to see how excited they were to pick things out for us. I got a silk rose from Aly and a #1 Mom pen from Analise. Too cute. The rest of my life has been consumed with primary (of course), speaking in church, and cooking. I'm not a big baker, but for some reason this year I got sucked into 4 pumpkin pies, 3 pans of brownies, 2 batches of PB/Hershey kiss cookies, and a partridge in a pear tree. The insane thing is that it all got eaten.
Analise's class put on a play, "The Littlest Christmas Tree" and it was fun to watch. Analise got to be a cardinal. Analise continues to amaze me. She told me recently that she and her friends take turns saying a prayer on their food before they eat lunch. She is such a good example (well, most of the time.)
Aly sang fabulously in her Christmas Choral Concerts. She is a natural performer and didn't even get nervous when singing her solo in French. Aly is also loving being 8 years old and being able to attend Activity Days at church. Man! When did my little girl get so big? Literally - she has now started borrowing some of my clothes and we have the same sock size. Things are going to get really interesting when she starts hand-me-downing clothes to me. I'll get to be "hip" again. :)
And as for Chris, he has been working turbo time to finish this quarter and get our family set to go home for Christmas. Once his finals/papers/projects were all done he jumped right in to demolishing our garden, registering the van, updating the 72 hour kits, renewing the scouting charter, and helping me pack and clean up the house. In the past few days as we've been trying to prepare for the trek to Utah, we've discovered that a couple of lugnuts were missing on one of our tires, and today we discovered a leak in our hot water heater. It's crazy how these things always come about at the last minute, but I consider it a huge blessing that we discovered these things before we left so that we don't have to deal with losing a tire while crossing the mountains in the middle of the night and we won't come home to a soggy, sauna house. Wherever and however you will be spending your holidays, we hope that it is full of peace and joy. (That was my church talk topic - The Blessings of Peace - and it was very helpful for me to regain perspective during this busy time of year.) See you all in a few weeks!
