Family Christmas

 So, I'm a little behind..... Without apologizing for that, I'll just carry on with the post.  Because we do a crazy travel loop for Christmas (to Ohio and North Carolina, neither of which are states we live near....), we typically celebrate our family Christmas early, before we travel.  For some reason that I don't understand and can't fix, these pictures aren't in the order I attempted to post them.  Anyway, the photo above is the kids with the handmade gifts they made for each other.  Very sweet.

Our tradition, passed down from my family, is that our kids have to wait on the steps until they hear a bell.  Then they can come down for Christmas.  Jack and I, of course, like to torture them by making coffee and piddling around doing other unnecessary things while they squawk at us from the steps.  I included this next picture because I think I took the same picture last year in the hopes that the scene would look very different this year.  And it does!  Paint on the walls, on the steps, finished hardwood treads, finished trim.  Progress!

This is the shot from "Christmas Eve".  The picture is horrible - it makes my eyes hurt to look at it because it's so blurry - but I include it because it's such a happy time.  It is such a joy to shop for my kids and to prepare for Christmas.  And I think stuffing their stockings might be my absolute favorite parenting moment of each year.  It's just so precious.

A ski goggle Christmas.  I totally guessed on Jack's.  Thankfully, he loves them!

These Nordic jackets were one of the boys favorite gifts.  And they were a pleasure to give.  Our cross country ski program starts at the beginning of December.  Many of the kids that my kids ski with were wearing new coats at the start of the program.  I knew we would wait to give these jackets until Christmas.  I was so proud of the boys for not complaining or begging.  The closest they came to anything like envy was to declare (talking about the new club jackets), "Those jackets are reeeeallllly nice.......".  They were so excited to receive their own jackets and they've hardly stopped wearing them for the past six weeks. 

Precious times with my littlest

The boys got a balance board for Christmas.  Another hit!

Hats for Jack and me (didn't he pick out a pretty one for me?!)

New clothes, new toys

Annie posing with her new clothes and accessories

After opening gifts, we enjoyed a hike in the woods behind our house.  I'm still amazed and continually thankful that we can enjoy this kind of hike without even getting into the car.  It's our backyard!  Although we had been wanting snow, we enjoyed the beautiful day without it.

I don't usually get to be in the pictures!

Notice the carnage?  But Jack is doing what he should be doing on "Christmas" - reading his new book.

Gingerbread castle!

Our family and our good friends are studying Medieval times for history this year.  So my friend Julie did an amazing job setting everything up for the kids to create and decorate a gingerbread castle.  She had planned and prepared all of the pieces, but then left the kids to figure out how to put it all together. 

Aidan didn't really know what what going on, but there was candy involved so he was interested.  He made Nate upset when he ate the gingerbread man Nate was planning to decorate into a soldier.

The finished product was awesome!

Forts, feasts, and wreaths as we prepare for Christmas

Some Christmas card outtakes 

This doesn't really have anything to do with preparing for Christmas, but the kids spent one day in December building a really great fort in the living room.

This part of the fort was Annie's office.  She set it up like Daddy's office and composed a great many letters to everyone in the family during her office hours.A

A new tradition:  celebrating the Feast of Saint Nicholas on December 6.  After skiing, the kids enjoyed candy canes in their hot chocolate.

Then we surprised them with Saint Nicholas gifts.  A puzzle for the big boys and books for the other three.

We get together with a group of Catholic home school families on the First Friday of each month.  After Mass in December, a few of the moms (not me, the Mom who breaks out in a cold sweat at the thought of setting up a craft for large groups of kids) organized various Christmas crafts for the kids.  My kids absolutely love making wreaths and arrangements with greens.  They. LOVE. it.    And they do a beautiful job.  Their creations make our home so festive!

Jakin created our family's Advent wreath.

Catching up/Thanksgiving and Jack's birthday

 It's New Year's Eve.  Our family returned home this evening from our ten days of crazy Christmas traveling.  Everyone in the house is asleep and some in the house are sick.  I'm in my pajamas by the fire.  I expect it's going to be a quiet evening so I'm going to try to catch up on a little bit of what's happened in the past two months since my last post.

My parents spent another Thanksgiving with us.  I'm so glad they've been able to join us these past years.  It's nice to have family here and to also relax.  On the day before Thanksgiving, Jack installed the new island counter top.  Beautiful!  And huge!  The picture above shows that all four adults could have our own work station at the island without being in each other's way at all.  Really nice.

We usually get our Christmas tree on the day after Thanksgiving. 

My parents were very generous to stay with our kids for about 28 hours so that Jack and I could sneak in a quick getaway to celebrate his 40th birthday.  We enjoyed a hike (just the two of us!  I don't think that's happened since we've had children), dinner, a lovely bed and breakfast, Christmas shopping (thank you, Jack!), and time reading in one of our favorite bookstores.  Thank you, Mom and Dad.

Our family celebrated Jack's birthday almost exactly as we celebrated my birthday back in October.  After a family hike, we ordered a pizza, make chocolate pudding cake, and ate both by the fire in the living room.  Jack fell asleep early by the fire and I did some furious Cyber Monday shopping.

I don't take many pictures of adult birthdays, but I had to take this picture of Annie's birthday project for her Dad.

Halloween

One nice thing about our Halloween plans each year is that we don't have to plan.  We head out with the same friends every year, just as we have since 2004.  That's good stuff.  Good memories.

Annie loves to dress and decorate for holidays.  She and Lauren had their "during the day" Halloween clothes laying out before they went to bed on October 30.  

I'm definitely the kind of mom who encourages my kids to raid the dress up bin an hour before trick-or-treating starts (rather than planning elaborate costumes weeks in advance... and since I don't sew or knit, I certainly don't make their costumes).  The kids did pretty well coming up with costumes this year.  We had two cowboys.

Two little Ingalls girls.  Having a mother-in-law who makes beautiful costumes for my kids helps a lot with Halloween costume planning.

And Jakin was a Viking

Aidan wasn't quite sure what was going on, but he got to ride on Daddy's shoulders and people gave him candy every once in a while, so he was happy.

Lauren with her good buddy, Nate.  Lauren RAN for the first half of the night.  Seeing her run and run from house to house with that cute little costume on was the highlight of the night for me.

Eating candy after trick-or-treating

Another part of the Halloween tradition that my kids love is the opportunity to dump all of their candy on to the floor at the end of the night.  After sorting comes trading!  While the big boys and the girls went off to trade with their friends, Lauren stayed on the porch to trade with Pete.  He and his wife had dressed up as bacon and eggs.  Pete reasoned that since he was dressed up, he could take a bag and trick-or-treat right along with the kids.  Much to his wife's mortification, Pete came home with a whole bag of candy and he and Lauren worked some deals in the Halloween after party.