A Mighty Bean, Dsi, Barbie Kind of Christmas

Count your blessings...that should be the theme of our lives everyday, but I know I don't think of that as often as I should throughout the year. It's RESOUNDS in my head especially at Christmas. It's around this time of the year that I usually start working on my yearly photo book. Three years ago I decided to stop printing so many digital photos and start doing a yearly photo book to chronicle the events of the year. I still print my favorites, but with the world of digital photography, I found myself filling up loads & loads of bulky photo albums. The books are slim and compact and fit nicely on a bookshelf. As I was saying, I work on my book this time of the year and looking back through the years photos (and reading past blog posts), it reminds me of how quickly time passes. Christmas is the time of year with being with the one's you love--thanks Christmas Vacation for that great song--but it is so true. I'm especially thankful this year: thankful that I'm healthy and so is my family, thankful that Uncle Mike is alive, thankful to still have my parents, in-laws, and all of our grandparents, thankful for my sister and Paul, their kids, Matt's brothers and my sister-in-laws, my adopted family the Maglinger's and Garcia's, Ms. Windy, great friends...love getting all those Christmas cards--mainly I'm thankful for the people God has placed in my life. I want to be more and more thankful for them each year because it truly is a treasure that we take for granted.

Christmas celebrations began on Friday at Plano. Thank goodness we didn't get snowed out. Plano does a pajama day, and the kids get to watch Polar Express. This year both Karson's and Isaac's classes asked everyone to bring in stocking stuffers. I'm guessing the traditional exchanges are just to difficult. Thinking back on my school gift exchanges, I remember this girl named Amy ALWAYS drew my name. Amy wasn't the kind of girl you'd want to draw your name. She was one of those "bad influence" kind of girls--the kind of girl that probably brought a knife to school and smoked outside the gym when no-one was looking. She had really short, butchy hair, questionable language, lived with her grandmother, rough around the edges kind of gal. Let me put it to you this way, Amy and I pulled the school fire alarm on the last day of school in 5th grade--what can I say she double-dog-dared me? Anyway, like I was saying, she ALWAYS drew my name. However, she always got me some of my nicest gifts, usually from Container World which was HUGE in my elementary school days. Not sure how that applies to this, but it's a memory I have of gift exchanges. I wonder what ever happened to Amy???

My sister scheduled a bowling party at Southern Lanes on Wednesday (Christmas week). The kids had fun getting out of the house and doing something different. I think Miles out-bowled all of the older kids. He was so cute. His ball took a solid hour to get down the lane, but he sure didn't let that stop him from having fun.

Miles and Samuel would bowl their balls and lay down on the lane. It reminded me of how a golfer looks at the line of his golf ball for that outstanding putt.

A couple of beauty boats (minus one--can you guess which one??).

Christmas at my Mom and Dad's house NEVER disappoints. We started Christmas Eve morning there. My grandparents and Uncle Mike spoil them with money and gifts. Uncle Mike gave each of the kids $50 to spend a few weeks ago. They love going to pick out their things. Miles didn't go--he really had no interest in shopping and only wanted a Nintendo DSi this year (I'll get to that later). Karson and Isaac perused the aisles at Wal-Mart and selected all their items. Karson's main thing this year was BARBIE and Isaac's for some reason was MIGHTY BEANS. I selected a couple of things for Miles.

My mom also takes the kids shopping to pick our their gifts. I honestly LOVE this method and will probably do the same when I have grandchildren of my own. There are just so many toys out there. I had NO IDEA Isaac even liked Mighty Beans. He's never talked about them or expressed an interest. That's all he wanted this year.

It's been a tradition in our family to sing "The Twelve Days of Christmas" with different family members singing each part. I took video of the 12th day down to spare you from our terrible singing (or mine anyways).

After spending most of the morning and afternoon with my family, we went to Matt's Mamaw's house that night and celebrated with them.
Christmas morning was lovely. Blankets of white snow covered everything. I heard it was the first white Christmas since 1993 --17 years ago. We spent our morning opening up gifts and enjoying time together. Santa brought Karson a Barbie dream house. And he brought Isaac and Miles DSi's. Normally a 4 year old child wouldn't request such an extravagant gift, but Miles has been exposed to so much more than Karson and Isaac. He has four people above him in the family pecking order (Karson, Evan, Elizabeth and Isaac). K, E & E all have DSi's. Isaac started wanting his own this summer when E & E got theirs for their birthday, and then later on Miles started wanting one too. I was really hoping I wouldn't have to purchase TWO more DSi's simply because TWO will be available to Miles at anytime once school is back in session. However, it was the ONLY thing he wanted. How could Santa not bring one? In fact on Christmas morning as the two older children were BLOWING through their gifts, Miles was completely content with his DSi. We couldn't even get him to open up his other gifts. He wasn't interested--all he wanted was his DSi. After much persuasion, he finally opened his other presents (but wasn't as thrilled about them).

Let me just say that my boys are ALWAYS in their underwear. I can barely stand to wear short sleeves this time of the year, and they run around in the buff all day.

Occasionally I can get some pajamas on them. Here is Isaac intent on his DSi game with his spy glasses on. He wore these to church Sunday morning. I got him some spy gear this year (I wasn't about to buy more Mighty Beans).

The loot.
Later that morning, we went over to Colvin and Debbie's so the kids could open their gifts there.

We didn't spend anytime in the snow mainly because we had to be at Matt's granny's house later that afternoon. Andrew brought his 4-wheelers over, but we never made it out. Our kids aren't snow lovers by any measure--they will go play in it, but it's usually for about 5-10 minutes. It's not worth the bundling or persuading to get them go outside SO we spent our white Christmas indoors. We went to Granny and Grandads later that afternoon and crashed at home later that evening. It's was a special holiday!!!