Summing Up December

December was SO busy for us (as it was for all of you, I'm sure). We had birthdays, a new pet, stomach viruses, the start of a basketball season (for Bubby) and of course, Christmas ..... the list seemed endless.

I am enjoying this weekend of recovering and preparing for a new year.

Here are some pictures summing up our last month.

Bubby turned nine. We celebrated with a small party at the skating rink. His present from us was a basketball goal. It did get set up but I have yet to take a picture of it that way.

He was glad his buddy WHK could be one of the friends who came to help him celebrate with some skating fun. Thanks WHK!

           

Bubby also renewed his love for building forts in my living room. It makes for quite a mess but he has so much fun with a few chairs, a couple of blankets and a flashlight.

   

We loved getting all your precious cards this year. We decided to display them like this:

                               

We kept up our Advent Wreath and Jesse Tree activities quite well although I didn't take any more pictures. Other than the fact that Jenni thought the wreath was supposed to be her bed and the Jesse Tree was supposed to be her play toy, it went really well. Those nightly readings by candlelight were very meaningful to us all. I am looking forward to continuing that tradition.

Well, I guess that brings us up to Christmas. We had all the family over on Christmas Eve for dinner, presents and fun. Here are some pics:

Fancy taught "GaGa" (The Husband's Mom) how to do the Cha Cha Slide:

                       

There were cousin pillow wars .... and at this point, let the record show that my son WAS wearing more than a WHITE T-shirt at ONE point:

Silly cousins:

My houseful enjoying some yummy fajitas:

                              

My Mom and Brother:

                           

My Mom, Sister and Niece:                                                                        

The kids got money from a lot of family. At their age, I guess it is easier to let them pick out gifts themselves. Now I get to take them shopping. Thanks A LOT!! hehe

GaGa thought it would be fun to give the kids a sum of money in ALL ONES. The kids thought it was great to show off their WADS of cash.

At the end of the evening, Bubby decided to have a drum tutorial for the littler kids. It was a BIG HIT (Pun INTENDED).

The next day, we had a nice Christmas morning of breakfast (provided by GaGa - THANK YOU!) and presents with just the four of us IN OUR JAMMIES (as it should be).

Here are a couple of pics of the kids with gifts:

(Fancy's big gift was in the form of a letter telling her of the upgrades to her cell phone usage .... quite a happy girl! .... and for Bubby .... it's all about the Legos people!)

We got them the game "Yahtzee Free For All" and we had TONS of fun playing it. We have played MANY rounds over the last few days. Here is a pic with NO FACES. Not one of us was photo worthy at this point of the morning! =)

                              

There has also been MUCH enjoyment from playing Rock Band on the Playstation. I haven't gotten in on it YET but plan on having a blast with the lead singer role. =)

         

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and I hope the New Year brings many blessings!

BFFs

Welcome Jenni

We got en early Christmas present from the local animal shelter and are enjoying her ever so much.

 

                              

We keep finding her snuggled up in the strangest of places.

We discovered she actually didn't hate taking a bath as much as we thought she would. Turns out though that soaking wet isn't a good look for her. =)

                        

She is a perfect snuggle buddy ..... she has even enjoyed reading the bible with me a few mornings. Bubby worked hard to get this picture just right:

                       

Second Advent Sunday

Our Jesse Tree is coming along. We are really enjoying this activity. It's cute to me that you can tell who hangs the ornaments every night. They are all hanging about "Bubby" height.

Speaking of Bubby, he decided to "commercialize" our Advent Wreath this week. I'm not sure I'm a fan but I don't have the heart to mess with his creativity. Anyway, here it is with two candles lit during dinner tonight. We ate by candlelight .... except there was still a bit of sunlight mixed in. We ate a bit too early. =)

Here is the view out the window from our desk at dusk. I love Christmas lights!

The Homeschool Song

My kids and I enjoyed this on our "lunch break" today.

I wish I was smart enough to put the video here, but alas .... go here.

Still laughing!

Fancy and Her Math Helper

He sits with her throughout math every.single.day. Moral support .... priceless.

O Christmas Tree O Christmas Tree

So, we got the tree all decorated yesterday.

Wanna see?

Uh - Oh .... here is a better view:

Yeah, um ... I told The Husband (maybe more than once) that it was a bit crooked. First he said it was fine .. it was straight. Then he said it was as straight as it could be.

Of course I totally decided to go with what he said .... or I took it upon myself to crawl under there behind his back to try to fix it .... one or the other.

The details don't really matter do they? Anyway, now we have our first ever horizontal tree. It's the latest trend. Come on people, you know you are coveting my style!

Yep, The Husband is going to look for a new stand (which cracked into more than a few pieces) while he is at work today.

Gotta love him .... he just laughed yesterday and kissed me on the forehead when he came in and found my "adjustment".

Advent Happenings

Over the last few years I have read lots and lots about Advent and its traditions but have been intimidated to jump in.

Well, here we go.

We celebrated the first Sunday of Advent today. This is the first year we are being intentional about where our focus is this season. We have always tried to focus on Christ and not the commercial parts of this holiday, but this year we decided to intentionally talk about it every day.

We decided to make a Jesse Tree. I sent the boys to get us a "branch" .... I said a BRANCH .... I got this:

Yeah .... boys will be boys. =)

After some trimming I think we ended up with a nice tree that will sit in our kitchen window seat.

We got this book to help guide us.

Here are the kids diligently making our ornaments for each day's reading:

Here is our ornament for our Day One reading:

And here is Bubby placing it on our Jesse Tree:

We also made an Advent Wreath which I am super excited about. What a wonderful and simple way to focus on the Reason for this season.

The Husband made us a lovely dinner and we read our first Advent reading and lit our first candle. We decided to go with this book to guide our daily readings for the Advent season. We will read from it and the Jesse Tree book each day. The readings today were such a blessing. I can't wait to read them all!

We decided there was no better time to start our other decorations so The Husband drug out the tree. We used to always go cut down a real tree until we realized that it was no coincidence that Bubby was always sick at Christmas time. He was even hospitalized for his first birthday AND Christmas. Ugh. Anyway, turns out part of his problem was that he was allergic to the tree. Boo.

Here are Daddy and Fancy working away on the tree:

 

And Bubby working on the lights:

And me and Pedro supervising ..... well, we got tired:

And yes, for the "keeping it real portion" of this post, that is me laying with Pedro on the living room floor in my jammies. I never even got out of them today. That is the result of working the last five nights in a row. Painful. I was excited to get Advent rolling today but tuckered out during the decorating. I will have to go to bed soon so we can have a productive day around here tomorrow.

I hope you are all having fun getting ready for Christmas!