Christmas Recap

What a wonderful Christmas Day! I just love Christmas. The meaning behind it is so strong for me and my faith. I just love celebrating this day with my family. Here's a recap on our family's celebration this year.

The kids slept in a bit for them. Carson woke up at 6:00, crawled in bed next to me and feel right back asleep. I should note here that I've ALWAYS been the first one up on Christmas morning. All during my youth, I could sleep until noon...except on Christmas Day. My parents usually spend the night at our house on Christmas Eve so they can share in the excitement of the morning.

The big gift from Santa this year was a Wii and several games, which shocked both kids!

Elise also got the American Girl doll that she's been wanting. I just love that look of excitement on her face!

While we waited for the rest of the family to arrive, we spent the morning playing the Wii (hoping I burned off a few of those cookies!)....

...trying out Carson's new bike and getting pointers from Grandpa on changing gears (this is Carson's first bike with gears)....

....and cuddling up to read a book with Grandma.

As soon as everyone showed up, it was mass chaos...but a good and welcome chaos.

And we ate more food that one would think humanly possible! This is just the sweats table.

My sister married this guy a few years back.

He sure does bring a new element to Christmas!!! (We grew up in a family where you'd NEVER find alcohol!) The gun was a gift for my dad (to go skeet shooting....nothing harming living breathing animals). The big boys were tempted to try it out in our backyard. While we do live out in a country-like setting, we do have neighbors and the idea of playing with the gun in the backyard was quickly nixed! (And as for his beer...I was drinking wine out of plastic cup so he was in good company...guess he didn't bring us down too far after all!)

Me and three of my nephews. These boys will go back and forth and back and forth for the next few days between our house and my sister's. Tyler is 12, Carson is 10 and Spencer is 9 and they get along so well!

Elise practices more Hannah Montana songs on the Wii....I can't get that Girls Night Out tune out of my head!!!!

And my bestest gift this year? My hubby made me homemade chocolate truffles....just for me! :) He knews I just adore these. It was a wonderful gesture...proving that the best gifts are really from the heart and not from the wallet! :) (He did also get me a Flip video camera that I'm still figuring out...never fear, I'll be annoying you with videos in the very near future!)

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas with your family and friends! Can't wait to hear about them!

Merry Christmas!

The Presents Begin - Christmas Eve Celebrations

Perry comes from a German family and they traditionally open gifts on Christmas Eve. We've incorporated that tradition with the gifts from that side of the family. The kids started asking the minute they were up today when we could start opening gifts...just a little excited!


This pose pretty much sums up the energy level of the kids all day long!

And after opening gifts, we ended up with one hyper excited Hannah Montana. Who knew Elise knew the words to so many HM songs!

And Carson scored with some Bears wear! Guess the Chicago side of the family is trying to keep his loyalties straight! :)

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas Eve!

Christmas Tree

I had a few quiet moments earlier today. I sat down by the tree and looked over all the ornaments. There are so many ornaments on our tree that have such meaning.


Here are a few of my favorites.


Starting at the top, we bought the angel on our honeymoon...16 years ago...in Stowe, Vermont.



Our first year as parents. Carson was 6 weeks old on his first Christmas. What a special Christmas!



My Grandparents had ornaments of us as kids on their tree and, somehow, I ended up with these two. My Grandma made them and they are now a good 30+ years old. That's my sister and I in the one above (I'm in the yellow). My grandma also crocheted those outfits. :)



And this is just me. I was probably about 5 in this picture. I've always loved these ornaments and started putting up a picture ornament for each of my kids every year.



We were given this ornament the year before we brought Elise home. Ladybugs are a sign of good luck in the Chinese adoption community.


Here's Elise's first Christmas with us. She was 19 months old in this picture and the perfect age to enjoy her first Christmas celebration!

We bought this ornament while in China. I wish I would have thought to pick up more.

Elise went through a stage where she latched on to one particular stuffed pig and liked all things pig. Piggy went EVERYWHERE with her for about 3 years...her teachers even suggested we break the rules and Piggy was allowed to come to school with her.

And here's our first ornament representing our full family.

I just love the walk down memory lane when I look at our tree.

Girls Day In!

Our inaugural Girls Day In event was a huge success!

We originally scheduled it for a day my kids would be in school. But, with the threat of bad weather moving in, we moved our day up to Sunday. Elise was so excited to join us!

"When will they be here, momma?!?" Elise entertained herself by coloring this large box.

We started by grabbing a quick lunch and pouring over my Grandmother's (Gma) cookbooks. It was fun seeing the old recipes. She had one called "5:00 pm rolls." You start them at 5:00 pm, kneed them at 8:00 pm and finish them up in the morning. Gma would start her holiday baking before Thanksgiving and have freezers full of goodies by Christmas.

My mom showed Elise how to pipe out Gma's special mints. Elise had no idea you could MAKE mints!

My sister making fudge. Ain't she purdy?!? No one ever believed we were related growing up. She has a cute upturned nose (compared to my hawkish beak) and wore a DD bra (compared by "barely there" A cup). The boys never really noticed her cute nose, though.

Me and my mom!

Lots and lots of frosting goin' on!

Frosting Gma's burnt butter icing cookies (don't let the title fool you, they are the most delicious cookies ever...a butterscotch cookie covered by a butta' and sugar frosting...yummy!)

Elise was the designated "back scratcher" for when we got tired.

The fruits of our labor! There was another table completely full in the other room but I forgot to take a picture. We all ended up with lots and lots and lots of holiday goodies!

Phew...time for a rest! Elise with her very special Aunt Kristin. Aunt Kristin lives with 5 boys so she really enjoys her girly time with Elise.

Here's the gang! We missed having my sister-in-law join us, but never fear, there is a box of goodies enroute to them! And we missed having my grandmother with us, but we used lots of her recipes and she was with us in spirit (there is another box on its way to her as well!)

Wonder how much time I'll have to spend on the treadmill to counteract the damages of the weekend!

Holiday Baking

I will post pictures of the day later today or tomorrow but wanted to write about the background of today.

A co-worker was describing a girls shopping day she has with the female members of her family. It's something they all look foward to during the holiday season. It got me thinking that we could now do something like that.

You see, for living in this area for so long, my family is not originally from this area. We're New Yorkers through and through. Just living in the midwest. Here's how it happened.

Gretchen (me!) - left NY to attend college in Chicago. Decided to move there after college, met her hubby (who was born and raised in Chicago) and settled into married life in the windy city.

Kristin (my sister) - left NY to attend college in Boston. Moved to Maryland, got married, then moved again to St. Louis. When she moved to St. Louis, we were only 5 hours away and really enjoyed living "close" to family...this was as close to my family as we'd lived for years!

A few years into marital bliss, we wanted to escape the hassles of city living and start a family. Perry found a job in Southern Illinois and here we remain. The plus being that we were just across the Mississippi River from Kristin. YEAH!

My folks - pretty much lived in NY their entire lives with a few short stints here and there (Arkansas and Pennsylvania). Pretty entrenched in NY, though.

Eric (my brother) - the baby of the family left NY to attend the same college as I did in Chicago and still lives up there. That was the final breaking point for my parents. Now, all of their children will firmly growing roots in the midwest and they were spending a good chunk of their time visiting us here. They finally decided to retire and move to the St. Louis area. Double YEAH!

Aunt Carol - has always been close to our family and lived in lots of places during her working life. She retired in Virginia last year and wanted to move closer to family. At this point, no one was left in NY so her options were St. Louis or Maine (where the rest of the family has migrated). I think she wanted a break from snow so she chose St. Louis.

So...after that family history, you see that we have quite the extended family living in this area. It's been so fun creating new traditions now that we are all so close.

The newest (hopefully) tradition is this Girls Day In holiday baking (the idea of spending a day shopping in a mall this time of year is SOOOO unappealing to me!) We're going to pull out some of my grandmother's old holiday recipes and go to town.

I'll post pictures and recipes later today. My one rule for today is that no one can be stressed. My back is making that rule difficult for me, though! Double dang!

And if anyone is still reading this highly exciting post, just remember I'm sitting on the sofa with heating pad on my butt. I warned you I could be dangerous (and slightly boring) with the computer right now!!! :)

Back on track

I'm feeling a bit more relaxed and on track today. I wanted to share 2 quotes with you that helped my mood today:

"Behind every good kid is an exhausted mother!"

(annonymous)

"Parenting my son is like giving birth daily to broken dishes"

(paraphrased from Raising Your Children with No Regrets,

a book I'm reading right now and would highly recommend)

We finally got the tree up this weekend. We still need to adjust the furniture so it doesn't look so crowded in.


And the blinds from the dining room draped across the chair next to the tree add to the ambience, don't you think? The dining room is coming along but there a lot of little details! I'm hosting a baking day at our house next Monday and I'm relying on having the space to spread out in the dining room so that's our deadline.

The kids discovered some presents under the tree this weekend. I decided to mix it up a bit this year. They always dig through and find the ones with their names then spend the time until Christmas trying to figure out the gift.

This year, I'm putting numbers on the gifts.

Now they won't know WHICH gifts belong to them until Christmas.

That is, if I keep track of the list which decodes the numbers!

My mom tried this trick one year...and lost the list.

I'm hoping for better luck.

Either way, the kids were pretty stumped to discover numbers, not names, on the gifts under the tree!