Christmas 2010

Christmas this year was a lot of fun. The older the boys get, the more fun the holiday is. And my husband is very generous and great with gift giving, so Christmas was pretty great for me too.

On Christmas Eve we did Christmas with Keith's family. The adults in his family draw names, so Keith's brother in law had my name and I had Keith's name (Keith drew his mom's name.) I got 2 seasons of Friends and an iTunes gift card. I'm only 1 season short of owning the entire series, so I'm really excited about that. I bought Keith a polisher that he's been wanting so I think he was happy with that.

The boys of course scored big with their gifts. We got home about 9pm that night, the boys took a quick bath, went bed and then "Santa" got busy assembling toys and stuffing stockings and bringing out wrapped presents.

Under normal circumstances, I put wrapped presents under the tree as I get them done. But with a toddler in the house I didn't even attempt it this year. Thankfully Santa only had one major gift to assemble this year, so we weren't up until midnight like I know we were last year. Since the boys went to bed a little later than normal, they actually slept until about 8am on Christmas morning. That's always nice!

Santa had respectfully hidden his gifts, so the only things the boys saw when they came out in the living room were the stuffed stockings (laying with care by the fireplace. Don't know how Santa hangs stuffed stockings by the chimney with care, unless he nails them into the bricks or something. I've yet to get a stuffed stocking to stay hanging on my stocking hangers on the mantel...) and the wrapped presents under the tree.

The night before I had made a pan of cinnamon rolls, so I quickly iced them, we ate breakfast and then the present-palooza began. I figured it would make for a less cranky present time if the boys had eaten rather than waiting until after the fact. Santa brought Cooper the Fisher Price Laugh and Learn house and Garrett got Monster Truck Lightning McQueen, Monster Truck Mater and a kid-friendly real digital camera. They were both really excited with their gifts, though they had to each take a moment and play with the other's present before we moved on to stockings.

Thankfully this year, Cooper understood the unwrapping concept, but he was very meticulous with it and took much longer to open than Garrett preferred. Plus, he occasionally got annoyed with himself for the amount of time he was taking, but other than that he had a lot of fun.

I just want to share a couple of thoughts I have on gifts at Christmas time. While I know of many families who espouse to the "each child gets 3 gifts for Christmas because that's how many gifts Jesus got" belief. I do not. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it, it's just not our preference. But lest I sound like someone who is breaking the bank for Christmas however, I have to share that I begin Christmas shopping in the early fall (I would start even earlier, but with my boys at their current ages, it's too hard to do much shopping for them that far in advance. Their sizes change quickly, their preferences change quickly.) But in starting my shopping as early as I do, I keep a very close eye on specific items that I already have in mind, so that I can snatch them up at a discount. This worked really well for me this year. I did roughly 95% of my shopping online and paid very, very little in shipping (and what I did pay in shipping were for hard to find items.) Toys R Us had a huge sale over Halloween weekend and I bought the majority of the boys' Christmas then. We have a set amount of money we spend per child and when that's spent, we're done. I try to do my best to wrap things in a way so that they have roughly the same number of toys to open under the tree. Thankfully they're young enough not to realize that Cooper just opened 2 Veggie Tale movies in one gift versus 1 Scooby Doo movie in Garrett's box.

I managed to surprise Keith with one of his gifts this year. Each Christmas, we both give each other a list of ideas for gifts. Even though we live together and have known each other for 12 years, it's not always easy coming up with gift ideas so the lists go a long way to insuring that we have a general idea of what the other one is wanting/needing. Over the past several years, Keith has mentioned at different points how he couldn't wait for the boys to be old enough to buy them a remote control helicopter. He had never played with one before and just knew they would be a lot of fun. So I started researching them to get an idea of what would be a good one and came across an amazing deal. I figured a smaller helicopter that could be flown indoors would probably be the best choice, so I found one on Amazon, read reviews on it, crossed my fingers and ordered it. As it turns out, he has loved that thing and "plays" with it almost every day. Of course it wasn't on his list, so I was able to surprise him with it which makes it even better.

Once Christmas is over, I'm ready to take down the tree and move on with the year, but Keith called me a scrooge this year when I attempted to do this the day after Christmas. So we compromised and I took down all decorations except the tree then, and took it down on New Years.

I'm dreaming of a White Christmas

Well, we came thisclose to getting a White Christmas here in north Texas. On Christmas Eve, the flakes started coming down pretty thick, but by Christmas morning, everything was gone except for the cold weather. Oh well, we were still pretty excited to see snow on Christmas Eve.

Christmas '09 went down like this:

Keith had to work up until the day before Christmas Eve, so we were basically business as usual. Garrett didn't have school any the week of Christmas, so his class party was the Thursday before. He had a great time, we made ornaments (which was a bit tricky since Cooper was with me, but I needed to help Garrett with a few parts. Thankfully several of the other moms were really helpful.) We ate kid food, which consists of PB&J (though Garrett does not like those), rolled up lunchmeat (which he loves), cheese cubes, and of course the prerequisite veggie tray which all moms force their child to eat a few pieces from before they can have a Christmas cookie or cupcake. Garrett said he absolutely hates broccoli (who knew?) but I managed to get him to choke down a few carrots before he moved on to dessert. The gift exchange required that each child bring a $5 gift for a boy or a girl. We found a nice nerf gun for $5 to give to someone, but unfortunately Garrett got in return a remote control car that didn't work for even a second out of the box. Too bad he couldn't have ended up with his own gift. But, such is life when a lot of toys nowadays are cheaply made.

We went to church and watched the Christmas musical that Sunday, which was really good. And then I spent the days leading up to Christmas trying to keep Garrett out of the presents. On Christmas Eve, we spent the day at Keith's parents' house where we exchanged gifts with his family. It was a fun day, especially with the snow I mentioned earlier. When we got home that night, we put the boys to bed and then started assembly. Garrett's big gift was a 2 wheel bike with training wheels and Cooper got a "Busy Ball Popper". We only assembled those 2 gifts, put out the stocking stuffers and then went to bed.

Both boys were up at 6am, but thankfully are still young enough that we got them into our bed and we all slept until 7:30. (I know this was probably the last year that will happen, at least for awhile.) Of course we couldn't just run into the living room and start opening presents because for some crazy reason, 6 month old babies tend to insist on eating before anything else happens for the day. So we all had a quick breakfast and then moved on to stockings.

One thing that our family does, that my family did growing up, is that we take turns opening presents. None of this, free-for-all ripping into presents with wrapping paper flying everywhere and you're done in less than 30 minutes. Growing up in a family of 5 kids, the present-unwrapping festivities lasted a good 2 hours. Which we loved because it drug out the anticipation. We went around the room, each person opening one gift and we took turns who got to go first with each round. It was really fun, so that's what we do at our house now. It's nice to be able to see my child's reaction with each gift they open rather than ask them after the fact what they thought because the unwrapping was too chaotic.

Garrett's new bike that he found 2 weeks before Christmas in the box in my closet. He immediately told me "I don't know what that bike is in your closet." Thankfully he never mentioned it again and he seemed surprised on Christmas morning, so who knows.

With the several presents that Garrett opened, he proclaimed 2 of them to be exactly what he wanted. (Though he's liked all of them so far.) One of which I bought on a whim a few days before Christmas. He had never even mentioned Gator Golf, wanting it or otherwise, but I saw it was on sale and thought he might like it since he's currently into golf. Turns out that was one of his favorite gifts. That and the kid sized Snuggie that he got. He's been dying for one for quite awhile now.

Cooper seems to love the ball popper and a driving toy that we bought him.

For Christmas this year I got, the Wii fit, another Wii game, several photo albums, a Shark sweeper (which I've been wanting for a long time and I'm loving it!), a few books (Eat This Not That! is one of them and it's a great book! If you've never read it, you should! So interesting.), and a calendar. It was a great Christmas! We had a nice, relaxing day being at home, just the 4 of us. We've been doing this ever since we got married and I'm so glad we're able to spend Christmas at home with just our family. I fixed a ham for dinner along with the usual side dishes and we had plenty to eat.

The day after Christmas was spent doing some major cleaning. My closet got a big overhaul, the bathrooms were cleaned, floors swept (with my new sweeper, of course!), laundry done and put away, bedsheets changed, and all my Christmas decorations boxed up and ready for the attic. I know that seems early, and it is. But with all the baby equipment in our living room this year, I was getting tired of feeling cluttered. The tree was taking the spot where I've had the Jumperoo, so it's been floating around the living room and the Exersaucer always stays in the middle of the floor, so it was driving me a little crazy to feel like things were out of place. Next year it will be much better because this equipment will be gone and it will just be toys like always. I feel a little bit like the Grinch putting everything away the day after Christmas, but it's nice to feel like my living room is a bit more organized.

It's really hard to believe that Christmas is over! I feel like this year, more than any other year, it just snuck up on us all of the sudden and then flew by without any warning. I hope next year I'll be able to savor it a bit more. I also can't believe that by next Christmas, Cooper will be 18 months old! Definitely no longer a baby.

Christmas Pictures

This post is going to pretty much be entirely comprised of pictures. For me it's easier to do it this way.

This first pic is of Garrett and I decorating the tree, I hadn't started hanging ornaments at the top yet, but as of right now, ornaments are only on the top, the bottom ones have slowly migrated north (or to the trash can, thanks to the 3 year old who can destroy the indestructible). You can see our nativity set (the Fisher Price Little People one) on the cabinet under the TV and obviously the stockings are hung by the chimney with care. I have a few things on my dining room table and kitchen table, but I didn't take pictures of those. We have those electric candles in all the windows, but after our fire scare with the fridge a few weeks ago when we initially thought the candles were the culprit, I never turned them on after that, so really we only have a wreath on the door as an outdoor sign that we actually have Christmas spirit. Maybe next year I'll do a better job with my outside decor.

A week before we left for our trip to Indiana, we had our family Christmas here at home. I didn't want to haul every single gift we bought each other to and from Indiana. We saved the stocking stuffers and a few of the smaller presents to take with us and open on Christmas morning, the rest were opened the week before. Here are a few pictures from that day. This is Garrett helping Keith open a present.

Here I am making my excited face as I open a new phone for the house. Our's is old and a piece of crap, I love the new one! As you can see in the picture, I also got a new, big, stainless steel crockpot. I love it! I promise both of these items were on my Christmas list. Keith done good.

I know he looks disgusted here, but I promise it's his new, fake, excited smile face. He had just opened his new Thomas the train. We're drowning in trains over here.

Garrett's class had their Christmas party on the last day before the break. One of the things we did at the party was build gingerbread houses out of graham crackers, icing, and candy. Here he is showing off our creation. I think he got more icing on his shirt than on the house.

This is what happens when you're stuck in the car for 14 hours. You get a little crazy. Keith did this to see if Garrett would notice and what his reaction would be. He got a big kick out of it and this entertained him for quite some time. (That's Bullseye from Toy Story 2, for those of you who don't recognize him. He's not as famous as his counterparts, Buzz and Woody.)

So here's what I did with Buzz. There were some other stunts, but I could get carried away posting them, so let's move on.The day after we got there, we saw some snow flurries. It was also only 3 degrees outside with negative 19 degree windchill. Here's a quick shot of Garrett and Keith before getting in the car to go back to my parents after a visit with my Aunt Pat. You can kind of make out the snow flurries in this shot. This is what I did during a lot of my free time. Played old school Super Mario Brothers on the Nintendo from the early 90's. Fun! I managed the save the princess one time during the week. Another time I got to the final world, but completely forgot the pattern to get through it. I was lucky that first and only time to win the game, I even beat it with only 1 second on the clock! My brother, Jesse, and I both yelled "1 second!!!" The rest of the family was thrilled with us breaking the relative silence at that moment, but it was too exciting to not scream about it!

Here are my parents and their 3 grandkids. Yes, my child's mouth is wide open, but other than that, it's a good pic. In less than 6 months, they will add 2 more to this group.

Christmas Eve

Helping Pawpaw hunt for presents under the tree on Christmas morning.

Opening presents.

This is what Garrett and Jake did while we were eating Christmas dinner.

I guess that's it. My mom and sister can thank me for refraining from posting pictures of them trying out Riley's new hula hoop. I do accept bribes if you don't want me to post them in the future. :)

Home Once More

I didn't intend to go this long between blog posts, but it just sorta happened.  

Last Saturday, we left Texas and headed for Indiana.  I think Keith and I got about 4 hours of sleep the night before our 14 hour trip.  That always seems to be the case when traveling for some reason.  Keith was busy doing vehicle maintenance on our SUV and I was busy packing for the trip.  We left at 5:30 am that morning and hit the road.  Garrett stayed awake for about 2 hours and then managed to go back to sleep for a couple more hours, so that made the beginning of the trip very uneventful.  We had agreed that should Garrett fall asleep at any point in our journey, we would not stop at all unless we were out of gas.  Thankfully my bladder cooperated and we were ultimately able to get as far as Brinkley, Arkansas before making our first pit stop.  I have to say that Garrett has a bladder made of iron because that boy did such a tremendous job staying dry and waiting until stops.  He only told us one time that he needed to use the bathroom on the entire 14 hour trip.  

I had made us sandwiches for our meals, but when we stopped in Arkansas, it was lunchtime, and the gas station we chose was next door to McDonald's so Keith suggested we use their restroom and get Garrett a happy meal for lunch.  He doesn't care for sandwiches much.  So we did that, and I got out mine and Keith's sandwiches and we were back on the road.  We didn't stop again until Effingham, Illinois.  I was pretty proud of our longevity in the car.  By this point it's about 6 or 7 in the evening and Illinois was MUCH colder than Texas had been.  We decided to take a breather and actually sit down to eat Arby's.  After getting gas, it started misting some.  For the rest of the 2 hours on the road, I alternated my gaze between staring down the mist to be sure it hadn't turned into freezing rain or snow, and watching the thermometer in our SUV to be sure we hadn't reached freezing point.  We just made it in my parents' driveway before things started getting a little bad on the roads.  Their driveway had some ice patches.

The week there was a lot of fun.  Garrett enjoyed spending time with his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  On Sunday the high was about 3 degrees with a windchill of minus 19 degrees.  We definitely got our fill of cold weather.  I would have appreciated the cold had it been accompanied by a good snowfall, but we just saw snow flurries for a brief period of time.  I did get some pictures of Keith and Garrett out in it, but I don't know if you can even see the snow in the pictures since the flakes were so small.  I promise I'll have tons of pictures uploaded later and I'll post a blog including some of them, but my camera isn't cooperating with my work MacBook and Keith is on our Dell, so it will have to wait until later.  

Garrett had a wonderful Christmas and was showered with presents.  He enjoys the unwrapping process every bit as much as actually seeing the present inside.  I think he opened the majority of Keith's for him.  One funny point was when he helped me open a present and the present was the book "The Strong Willed Child" by Dr Dobson.  Kind of ironic since he's the reason for the book in the first place.  My brother, Jesse, got both of his nephews Nerf guns which were ultimately used more by the adults than the kids, of course.  The funniest gift though was the huge machete that Jesse bought Keith.  He loved it and has already tried it out on a cardboard box in the garage.  

One night our family played "Imagine If".  The premise of the game is that the card has a statement and you choose a person playing the game to fill in the statement, then everyone picks the option they think best completes the sentence about that person.  Well, I was chosen for a statement which was "Which form of communication would Lydia be?".  The options included: mental telepathy, telephone, email, car horn, and one or two others.  How wonderful was it that my own husband and 2 of my siblings chose car horn.  Yes, I know that's probably true, but still, they could have at least been nice about it, like the rest of the group was.

I do have to tell a funny story about Jesse though.  Garrett needs help pulling his pants up after using the bathroom at times.  Well, one of those times, Jesse just happened to be the closest to the bathroom, so I asked him to help Garrett.  He didn't want to do it, but he did it anyway.  At one point I heard him yell "His butt touched my arm!"  It was one of my highlights.  Anytime you can gross out your 19 year old brother, the one who regularly mooned us growing up, who was found naked in our other brother's bed because he was too lazy to get himself dressed after taking a shower and wanted to do some of his own grossing out, the one who loves to fart or belch in anyone's direction.  It's so worth it to have him help my 3 year old pull up his pants and know that Garrett was giving him a hard time of his own.  I also loved it when Jesse's girlfriend came over for the day on Friday and Garrett followed them around the entire time.  Jesse got a bit of a taste of what we dealt with when he was little and Grace, Brad, and myself were bringing home dates.    

The trip home was pretty similar to the trip up there, except it was a very windy day across the majority of the states we drove through.  After leaving Little Rock, it started pouring down rain and didn't let up for about an hour.  We did see one accident that resulted from the rain, but it didn't look like anyone was hurt, though their car did rollover.  

I will add just one thing to this.  During both of our days of traveling, to and from Indiana, we encountered many bad drivers, the type who run right up on your bumper as if they're going to push you out of their way or off the road.  Every single one of those drivers were from Texas.  It was almost funny after the 10th or 11th time it happened, we could just predict where they were from before we even saw their license plate.  Texans, we aren't doing ourselves any good when we drive like bats out of hell across the country.  It just makes us all appear to be terrible and rude drivers.  

Well, I must sign off now so I can finish watching "The Sound of Music".  Last time I blogged about watching this, Garrett was up all night with a terrible bout of croup and we ended up in the ER.  I really hope that isn't the case tonight.  

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

I am officially finished with all my Christmas present shopping! I bought Keith's last few gifts today and can now cross everyone off my list. Well, I do still have to buy a $5 gift for Garrett's Christmas party gift exchange, but that doesn't count, does it? It really does feel nice when you know everything is purchased and ready to be wrapped. For some reason the wrapping job is overwhelming me right now, but I really need to get on it. This Saturday we're doing our family Christmas so I need to atleast have those presents wrapped soon. Since we're going to be in Indiana on Christmas, we made the decision to do our own family Christmas on Saturday so that we can avoid hauling presents to and from Indiana. Of course we'll still take our stocking stuffers with us and maybe one or two smaller "tree" gifts, but everything else will be opened on Saturday.

My Christmas card pictures finally came in the mail today so now I need to put a picture in each card, seal them, stamp them, and mail them. Hopefully that last step will take place tomorrow.

I have one Christmas party out of the way and 2 more to go (3 if you include Garrett's school Christmas party). This Friday is Keith's work party. It's being held at the Dallas Arboretum, so I'm in hopes that the weather will be nice so we can walk around after the party is over. I bought a new top to wear to this party and I really hope it will still fit. It's fitted over the hips and let's just say that I think I'm going to be showing a little earlier than I did when I was pregnant with Garrett. So hopefully I can still get the shirt to work on Friday before I have to put it up for a few months. At last year's party, they had 2 handwriting analysts, and that was really interesting. I can't remember now exactly what they said about my handwriting, but it was pretty accurate, albeit generic. I'll be curious to see who the "entertainment" will be this year. It's an accounting firm so I don't have very high hopes, but it will be nice nonetheless.

Next Monday is the church staff Christmas party. Now that I work there part time, Keith and I are invited. This party should be interesting in more ways than one. But I'm mostly interested in seeing how the staff parties. I have a feeling they can be a pretty wild bunch when the opportunity presents itself so I'm sure it will be fun for the most part.

The weather outside is getting colder by the minute and putting me in a Christmas mood. Maybe I should go tackle some of the presents that need wrapping while I'm feeling this way. Because we all know it will be in the 70's by this weekend and the Christmas spirit will be waning some.

Does Anyone Have a Barf Bag?

Well, another Christmas has come and gone. All of the presents have been unwrapped, the trash can is overflowing with wrapping paper and a million twist ties, toy companies have now determined they are the best theft deterrant, I guess. We had a great Christmas but it was very similar to last year, in the fact that Garrett was sick, AGAIN. Thankfully we didn't have to spend the day at the minor emergency clinic with 105 degree fever like last year, but I would love to celebrate Christmas day with a healthy child and a full night's sleep the night before.

Yesterday, we went to my in-law's for the day and exchanged presents with them. Garrett made out like a bandit with a new tricycle, clothes, a few small toys and a stick horse. He doesn't quite understand the concept of a stick horse. You know, one of those horse's heads on a broom stick that you can pretend to ride around the house. But I'm sure he'll figure it out. Keith's family draws names, which makes things pretty simple. I had his name and he had his mom's name, which translates to me buying everything. I got him a handgun, which he was super excited about. His brother-in-law had my name and he gave me a ton of placemats, cloth napkins, and napkin rings. That may not excite some of you, but I've been wanting a variety of those, so I'm looking forward to decorating my dining room table with the seasons.

After exchanging gifts we all went to Keith's grandparents' for supper and more gift exchanging. Let me just say that their house was super hot! The thermostat was set on 80 degrees (no kidding, Keith checked and almost passed out) and the stove had probably been on for the entire day leading up to everyone coming over. Garrett started getting real grouchy. He hadn't napped at all, barely eaten at lunch, and had just downed half a glass of Sunny Delight (something he had never had). All of those things led to the perfect storm with a toddler, but instead of a tantrum, we had vomiting. Yes, it was a sight to behold. Fortunately (ha!) he only got it on me and the tile kitchen floor. I had already finished eating and Keith was about 3/4's of the way through, so we changed his clothes and headed home. We figured he had just gotten overheated and the Sunny D didn't set well on his stomach. Garrett was already acting like he felt much better, but that wasn't to last. About 15 minutes down the road, he started all over again. Keith and I were doing everything possible to keep from adding to the mess ourselves. I stripped Garrett down to his diaper, covered his carseat with a blanket and then covered Garrett with my coat. We somehow managed to make it home without any more messes.
We unstrapped the carseat and carried Garrett in, carseat and all. He was sacked out by this point. We cleaned out the car, thankfully the mess he made stayed on him and in his carseat. Then Garrett took a quick bath and got ready for bed. His last gift to open at Grandma's was a Buzz Lightyear doll. He has become obsessed with Toy Story lately. Once he was bathed, he seemed to be feeling better and wanted to play with Buzz, so we also let him open the Woody doll that we bought him. He was thrilled and Buzz and Woody helped to make him feel better. He went to bed hugging both dolls with a smile on his face. We were in hopes that we had seen the last of the stomach monster. Ha, ha, again. At midnight (after I had only been asleep for an hour due to getting out all of the presents and stuffing the stockings), I heard Garrett calling me. He had left me a present on his pillow. Really Garrett, you shouldn't have. After cleaning everything up, Garrett and I got into the big bed in his room (he's still in the crib). About 15 minutes later, he christened that bed. I was thinking, "we're running out of beds." So we headed to the living room. I covered one couch in towels, put a trashcan next to him on the floor (not that he understands the concept of aiming), and I "slept" on the other couch. Since Garrett still sleeps in a crib, he's not used to sleeping anywhere without sides to hold him in, so every move that he made woke me up because I was worried he would roll off the couch (he didn't). When I woke up at 4:30 to him playing with Buzz and Woody, I changed the bedding on his crib and put him in there. I crashed in my bed and managed to sleep for about 3 hours before Garrett woke us up for good this morning. Thankfully he wasn't sick, just awake and ready to get up. How exactly can kids still wake up at their normal time after such little sleep the night before? It's so irritating.

We got up and had a great time opening presents. Garrett was thrilled with everything he got and has kept himself busy playing all day (though he did take a 3.5 hour nap this afternoon, so that was wonderful). Keith did an awesome job buying for me, as he always does. I got a new iPod!!! I've only had an iPod shuffle up until now. It's so neat to watch videos on this tiny screen! (I'm laughing as I type that last sentence, seeing as how we still have a 19" TV, I should be used to watching videos on a tiny screen. ) He also bought me a new iron and breadbox (both things I asked for and was excited to get). He picked out a very nice picture to hang in our bedroom (he has great decorating taste, better than me most of the time). I'm still in the midst of trying to decorate our house and our bedroom walls are completely bare after having lived here for almost 5 years. I'm embarrassed to admit that, but it's true. I also got some smaller things like books, socks, a candle, some photo albums, and another season of "Friends". I managed to squeeze in a 30 minute nap while Garrett was sleeping and we've spent most of the afternoon washing all of the bedding that we went through last night and cleaning up the wrapping paper covering our living room floor. I think the bug or illness or whatever it was that we experienced yesterday and last night, is finally over. I do have to admit that this was our first time dealing with a stomach virus with Garrett, so I am very thankful that he hasn't had one before. Now I'm just in hopes that Keith and I didn't catch anything. I'm sure we'll find out in the next few days.

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and I pray that we all experience God's blessings in the New Year! Here's to everyone being healthy!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I can't believe today is the last day of November! This year has honestly flown by. I'm so excited that Christmas is almost here. It's my favorite time of year and always has been. I just love everything about Christmas. I'm especially loving the joy that Garrett is getting out of the holiday so far. He loved helping me decorate our tree last weekend and he enjoys moving ornaments around on a daily basis. He's broken 2 or 3 of them already. He enjoys pointing Santa out to me anywhere that he sees him, he runs to be the first one to turn on the Christmas tree lights every morning, he loves playing with the nativity set that I've put on the hearth. I'm trying to insure that he learns early on that Christmas isn't just about Santa and presents, but that it's Jesus' birthday. (Yes, I know that Jesus probably wasn't really born in the month of December, but there's nothing wrong with celebrating on December 25th.) I think it helps that his Sunday school class and Mother's Day Out class both sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and talk about His birth and how it all happened. I'm sure he doesn't understand everything, but I'm glad that he's learning the real meaning of Christmas. He walks around singing Happy Birthday all of the time now too. It's really cute!

One new tradition that we're starting this year now that he's older and willing to watch longer movies: we're watching Polar Express. I think it has a great message, so I definitely plan to make watching this movie an annual thing. Probably if we buy it we'll watch it more than just this time of year, but it's on TV (right now, actually) and we also rented it last week, so he's really getting into it. If you haven't seen that movie, you definitely need to rent it! It's so good! The music is great too.

I'm looking forward to having a bake-a-thon next week. This will be the first time that I've had Garrett help me with baking, but I think he will enjoy it and he'll be a big help. I love making chocolate-dipped pretzels, cookies, and I plan to include peanut butter balls in our baking this year, maybe even some fudge too.

One small brag, I am done Christmas shopping! I'm so excited to be done and I can't wait to start wrapping presents. Yes, I'm the weirdo who loves wrapping presents. It's fun for me to try to make a present look nice and use pretty paper and bows. I'm really excited to give Keith one of his presents. His family draws names and I drew Keith's name this year. Since I'm the only person giving him any Christmas presents I wanted to give him something really good, and I think I accomplished that. I'll find out on Christmas Eve when we exchange gifts with his family. I'm a little nervous because it's more money than I would normally spend, but I think he'll be excited when he sees it.

I am sad that I won't be celebrating Christmas with all of my family again this year. I will get to have a mini-Christmas with my parents in a couple of weeks, but I would love for all of my family to be able to get together for Christmas sometime soon. I'm sure it will be awhile before that happens, but I will pray hard that it happens sooner rather than later. I am glad that I'm able to start my own family traditions with Keith and Garrett. Most of them mirror the ones that we had growing up, but I'm enjoying passing my family traditions down to Garrett. Honestly, I'm also passing them to Keith. His family never really made a big deal about Christmas. Everybody would get one big gift, they didn't typically do stockings, and they didn't always have a tree. It makes me a little sad when I think about what Christmas was like for them growing up. But Keith doesn't feel like he's missed out on anything. I'm sure he thinks I'm a weirdo for going all out like I do every year. But he never complains. He's a great guy.

Everyone better be sure and post blogs about your Christmas when it's all said and done! I love hearing about how other people celebrate holidays.

I hope everyone has a super, Merry Christmas!