The 2018 Christmas is officially on the books and a good time was had by all.  This year Joyce was able to join us too!  We did the usual: meals and presents and hanging out.  It was great.  Here are a few pictures.  All of mine can be found in this Photos album.

On Christmas Eve we went out shopping and ended up hanging out with these hysterical alpaca llamas.

Silly llamas!

Christmas Eve dinner was tacos a la Joyce and Tom.

Thanks Joyce!

Santa came right on time.

Lights on

Lights off. I can’t decide which picture I like better.

On Christmas morning the kids woke us up at a very reasonable hour (a sure sign they’re growing up!).  The Makey-Makey bedroom present was so good we had to drag Lex downstairs to open stockings!  Then we all waited patiently while Mema and Tom went to church and Katie, Rosy, and Joyce got here.

Love

Finally it was time for presents!!

So happy to have this smiling face with us this year!

And this one!!!

Presents kept us busy for awhile. Lots of Legos and Harry Potter stuff and books and candy and so much more.

Looking good, Grandpa Tom!

Still going….

Bodhi got all worn out. There were a lot of presents to and from doggies this year.

Mema wins the cute picture prize this year!!

I love this one. I want to do some editing to make the colors pop, but she was so sweet reading under the tree. <3

Superman!

For Christmas dinner we invited my friend and her two boys over.  We all enjoyed lasagna, salad, and garlic bread.  Yum!

It’s hard to get a good picture with everyone looking, smiling, and not blinking!

My camera took a few selfies on its way down the table.

Sistas!

The girl on my other side wanted nothing to do with selfies, but the boy was happy to smile with me. He’s always happy to smile with me. Lucky me!

Now we settle into the driftless middle days between Christmas and New Year’s Day.  I’m loving every second of it!  I’m on book five, with a substantial stack waiting in the wings.  I’m eating all the candy (maybe that’s not so good) and just relaxing.  Today we fed the fish at school (all still alive!), spent our Books-A-Million gift cards (add to that reading pile!) and Eve bought herself a few new fish.  Tomorrow, we go back to doing nothing.  Life is good.  :)

We have nothing monumental going on these days, but lots of little holiday activities.

Alan and I went to his company party. It was fun to check out the fancy new hotel and to hang with his goofy buddies. I even thought to have someone take a picture of us!

We maybe got a little silly.

We’re doing lots of cookie baking.  I keep trying to entice the kids with new cookie ideas, but they always want to original tried and true!

Peanut butter blossoms. Yum!

Pretzel treats. We learned what happens when you cook the kisses too long. Its not a pretty site! These are the properly baked ones. The others we will eat quickly before anyone sees them!

Gingerbread cookies and decorating with friends.

Cookie decorating with teens and preteens gets a little interesting. Here we have two puppies in love.

And here we have a beheaded snowman with his head reattached, a sad gingerbread boy, and a gingerbread girl with a stake in her heart. Ya know, the usual cookie fare.

Lex had his winter concert earlier this week and impressed us all with not only his drumming skills, but also his ability to problem solve on the fly and keep cool under pressure (like when his amp isn’t working and then when it’s working TOO LOUD!)  He was a problem solver and handled it like a pro!

We have two more days of school and we are all looking forward to vacation!!

We got our tree this weekend and it’s PERFECT.  It was a great field.  Lots of perfect trees, so it took us just moments to find our perfect one.

An almost perfect family photo. The photographer had no interest in being in the picture. :(

This handsome boy loves being in pictures with me. Or at least he humors me and smiles for the camera. :)

Eve finally agreed to take a selfie with me. Um… thanks?

Alan and Lex took care of cutting and wrapping.

These tall kiddos want to put up all the high ornaments. I guess I’m in charge of the lower part of the tree these days!

In the evening Alan and I went to my DBS holiday party.  I was apprehensive, because I’m lame like that, but it was nice and we only stayed for an hour anyway because we had tickets to see Matilda!  We left the party, picked up the kids, and headed to the theater.  Like the fancy family we are! LOL!

I love this crazy bunch.

We had a great Christmas in the new house this year! Calm, crazy, and cozy. <3 The weather made for difficult travel on the 23rd, so Mandy, Mema, Tom, and Rosy all came up on Christmas Eve. It felt like a traditional Christmas Eve with last minute cleaning and eager children waiting for relatives to arrive. :)

Rosy and Dad made a delicious Christmas Eve vegetable soup and we all settled in for Santa and snow for Christmas.

Christmas morning came with eager children, rowdy doggies, and lots and LOTS of snow!  Unfortunately that meant Aunt Katie couldn’t join us for presents Christmas morning.  It certainly made for a beautiful day though.

We enjoyed stockings and breakfast and presents and brunch and naps and cookies and all the love and family and fun.  Some crazy people (and pups) even chose to brave the elements and go out side, briefly.

I was not one of those people!

I chose to stay in the cozy warm house with hot tea and new games.

For Christmas dinner was had the most informal lasagna and salad possible.  My friend Eirene came over with her two boys and we had a nice cozy evening.

On Wednesday morning (the 26th), Katie came over for another round of Christmas.  The temperature had dropped significantly, but the sun was shining and the roads were clear-ish.

Wednesday afternoon brought swimming (at Rosy’s hotel), napping, and lots more cookie consumption.  Hmm… actually maybe I’m missing a day.  I think Tuesday was swimming and tater tot casserole for dinner.  Wednesday was… who can remember!  Wednesday evening we used our Christmas tickets from Greg and Kathy and went to the Lebanon Opera House to enjoy an awesome concert/comedy show.

Thanks Greg and Kathy!!!  It was fun and funny and loud!  :)

After the Christmas Day snow storm the temperatures dropped fast and we spent the week feeling very grateful for the cozy house.  The dogs went out to play a few times, but even they didn’t want to be outside for long.

Here’s to a wonderful Christmas and peaceful end to 2017.

I got the Advent boxes up just in time! They just have chocolate in them this year, no toys or games, but I think that will be ok. I couldn’t resist the beautiful Advent calendar in the background. Each window has fun suggestions for holiday activities. The Advent cookbook has a sweet new recipe for each day. Eve has been so excited to bake cookies, so I know she’ll enjoy that. ??????🎄 Happy December!

Hey, Christmas happened this year! With the usual trimmings and trappings and fanfare. :) We had Rosy and Barney with us, and Grandpa Don and Pat. We missed Pop Cube and Grandma though. The kids are growing up and (slightly) less exciting at Christmas (shh! don’t tell them I said so), but we had a house full of puppies to keep us all on our toes.

The fun started Christmas Eve when everyone arrived. Well, we had fun cleaning on Christmas Eve EVE (and teasing Eve, Eve, Eve), but the party started the next day with company and pizza at our house. Fortunately the pizza place is open on Christmas Eve. Fortunately for us anyway, maybe not for the pizza place employees.

After a nice dinner and family catch up time, the kids went to bed and Santa came!

I always love our living room on Christmas Eve. <3

Santa leaves two presents in for each kid in their bedrooms (in the hopes that mommy can get a little extra sleep). This year the presents were books and Legos and the kids gloriously stayed upstairs until 7am! Then they had to wake Aunt Rosy, wait for us adults to get some caffeine, then pose for pictures before finally, FINALLY, busting into the living room to examine the goods!

I love watching them look from afar. :)

A Beanie Boo!! What more could you ask for than a weird, big-eyed stuffy in your stocking!! She has dozens already, but she still loved this one too.

Even Arlo got a stocking full of treats, and even Arlo ended up with a belly ache from eating too many treats on Christmas morning!

Then it was time for breakfast (who am I kidding, more candy coming right up!) and waiting patiently (ha!) for the rest of the family to get done with church and come over. We do presents in stages around here. Bedroom presents first thing in the morning, stockings when the parents are awake, then the rest of the presents with the whole family. Good thing those early presents are strategically chosen. :)

Bodhi is getting so big! And so very tolerant. Arlo would never calmly allow this to happen to him. :)

For all the present unwrapping pictures (and all the pictures from Christmas), check out the Google album.

The kids got Ozobots for Christmas and had fun drawing paths for them to follow.

Lovely ladies.

Christmas dinner consisted of ham (honey glazed or something with pineapple and stuff, someone else could give you a much better title than I), and veggie lasagna, and salad. It was all delicious, of course. Then we washed it down with wine and cookies!

The obligatory selfie-stick pic. The crowd was small this year.

The next day we spent exploring our presents, reading lots of books, painting, and shopping with holiday gift cards. :)

Eve got face paints, which she promptly turned in to whole body paints!

Fruit Ninja on the XBox Kinect with Uncle Barney. Life is good.

Something went wrong that evening and several of us ended up throwing up all night. Not really the best way to spend a night (or the following day!), but at least it was over vacation. Poor Rosy had to drive home with a sick belly. :( Fortunately it didn’t last long and by the following day we were all feeling better again.

We are home today, totally snowed in (or so the weather forecast tells me, I don’t know, it’s dark outside), eating dinner on the couch, watching a Marx Brothers movie, and enjoying our vacation to the fullest.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

For all of my Christmas photos, head on over to the Google album.

This year we managed to double our holiday party invitations (received!), going from two to four! For the past many years we’ve needed a babysitter just twice a year, both times in December. Once for Alan’s company party and once for Elizabeth’s Christmas party. It’s hard to keep babysitters when you only use them twice a year! :)

This year we also got invited to my school staff party and the town staff party! So fun! :) Unfortunately, due to weather and illness, we only made it to two parties. Sigh.

The school party was last weekend when Alan was still wiped out from pneumonia and I was resting my voice after surgery. I was disappointed to miss the first one, but it had to be done. Last night we went to Alan’s company party. It was nice enough. It’s a cocktail party, which isn’t my favorite style, but everyone is nice and we had fun. Tonight was Elizabeth’s party, but she cancelled it because the roads were AWFUL! I took the kids to a birthday party at 1pm and the roads were barely plowed with snowbanks everywhere! We made it to the party, but it took awhile! I was sad that she canceled her party this evening, but also glad that she didn’t leave it up to the guests to decide whether or not to risk her long, hilly dirt road. So I cancelled the babysitter and told Alan when he came home from karate. He immediately said, “Get the babysitter back! I have a backup party!” Haha.. Ok! I had forgotten that the town staff party was that day and Select Board members were invited. The party was right in town and easy enough to get to on the bad roads (and the snow had stopped by then, which helped!) so we went to the backup party and it was TONS of fun! It was great to finally put faces to all the names he talks about from meetings and names I see in the paper. They had an excellent buffet, hosted the party in a renovated space down town, and cleared the tables at the end for dancing!! I haven’t been to a party with dancing in ages! We’re all a bunch of old folks so the party ended at nine, but it was a great time and I’m so glad that Alan had a backup party ready to go. :)

Happy Holidays!

Today was free and decoration day, starting with the return of my adorable reindeer who spent the summer at the neighbors house, awaiting repairs.  He is all put together again and ready to jingle all the way!

How does he not have a name after all these years?! I’m always happy to see him each year.

Then, after pancakes and a shower, we headed out to get a tree.  Out past few tree outtings have been less than idylic (though I probably didn’t mention that on the blog), and Alan stillnisnt feeling well (did I mention his pneumonia?), so the kids and I headed down to our local Christmas tree parking lot.  We quickly found a perfect tree and I tied it into the new car platform.  So much easier than the roof of the car!

My camera sucks! It randomly doesn’t save pictures I take. It didn’t save the adorable picture of Lex standing by the tree, but it did save this silly rearview mirror picture. Dang technology! 😕

We spent the afternoon listening to Christmas music and decorating the house.

It was fun to see the kids getting out the Christmas stuff together and reminicing over the ornaments.

Haha. It looks like we have balloons on the tree!

This is a blurry picture, but a funny situation. Eve was putting out the nativity scene and Arlo came over to check it out, unbeknownst to her. She turned suddenly to say something to me and bumped right into Arlo’s nose. We all laughed. 😄

It’s important to hang candy canes ON the tree topper …

… and to take advantage of climbing on the furniture whenever possible!

Happy Holidays!

There are only four of us and we still can’t get a picture with everyone smiling. Goof balls. We tried to get Arlo in the picture too, but he wanted nothing to do with any of it.

The annual clearing off of the table. Don’t blink of you’ll miss it!

My grandparents crèche. I told Eve that baby Jesus doesn’t arrive until Christmas Eve, but she didn’t care.

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