from us, to you.

I’m stopping in to wish you all the most wonderful Christmas season. It’s likely that you won’t hear from me again until the new year, but then again, perhaps you may. As of 5pm today, Daddy will be on holidays for a good, long chunk. We’ve got lots going on in the coming weeks and are over the moon excited to celebrate our first Christmas in our new home, with our new babe.

Enjoy a season of cherished memories and relaxation with your families. May your hearts be filled with the wondrous love of Jesus as we celebrate His birth.

Merry Christmas.

From Us, To You.

(I apologize for the pic of a pic)

Ho ho ho!

Yesterday was a big day for us. We kicked off the holiday season with a bang by going to the mall to visit Santa and take a ride (or four) on the Polar Bear Express. Before I go further, let me mention that this was Eva’s first trip into real public wearing undies since she’s been potty trained. She has gotten out of the house a lot but just to school, church and friend’s/family’s homes. It was the first time in a store or mall or anything like that. So, it could have been a disaster. But of course, it was not. She did great on the 45 minute drive there. Told me she had to go potty when we got there so we raced into Old Navy and she went. Of course she went a few more times while we were there … I’m pretty sure the novelty of going into the bathroom was a big part of it because she never has to pee that often, but hey. Along with that, she behaved so well which sometimes isn’t always the case when you try to contain a toddler in a stroller in the mall. She sat nicely for dinner and listened to me and the bestie’s the whole time. What a sweet girl. On the way home, I told her how proud I was that she was such a good girl and listened and obeyed the whole time we were out. She said… “And Cindy, too. I proud of Cindy. She a good girl, too”. Well, props to Cindy.

Now onto the good stuff. We had heard that the mall had a pretty sweet Santa display so we decided to hit the town and take the kids. The day before, I started prepping Evalyn because I had a feeling she might not be too pumped with the Big Guy once we got there. When I showed her the picture of her sitting on Santa’s lap last year, she looked at me like I must be crazy. Like, “waitaminute … you’re going to make me sit there with that big creepy guy"? But, despite that, she seemed excited. She asked over and over again when we were going to see Santa. When she got up yesterday she was a bit confused and asked “Can we go see Jesus now?” Erm, gotta get this straight, I guess. I took her to preschool in the morning and she excitedly told her teacher that she would be going to see Santa after nap.

When we got home, I’ve never seen her eat lunch that fast and be that eager to go to sleep. On the drive to the mall she asked me if we were at Santa’s house yet about 483902483 times. Asked if he would be on a big chair. If he’d have a beard. If she could say “Merry Christmas” to him. Once we got there, she was excited but waited pretty patiently while I went to a store to do a return. We met up with the girls and the babes and headed to Santa. I was still pretty confident that she might totally back out as soon as she saw him.

When we got there, there was no line up but one child already speaking with Santa, so we were up next. That’s when the positive self talk started. She was like, “I want to see Santa. I don’t want to see Santa. I don’t want to sit with him. Is it my turn now? I don’t want to see him. Can I go say hi now?” When it was our turn, I was holding Gwen so I took her hand and started to walk toward him. Then she started back pedaling. She put the breaks on. I told her that she didn’t have to sit on his lap, just say hi. So Gwennie sat on his lap and Eva hesitantly got up beside him on the bench.

She was just so cute. She was obviously nervous and hesitant of him but wanted so badly to enjoy it and have fun. At one point, she even said, “Dis is fun. Sitting wis Santa is fun” with a shaky, kind of whimpery voice. Despite her reservations she was so polite to Santa. Wished him a Merry Christmas and thanked him for the candy cane and coloring book.

As soon as she was done with Santa, she wasted no time in getting in line for the train ride. She had fun yelling “ALL ABOARD” and looking at all the directions around the track. Mr. Conductor made the ride even better with his excitement and animation. And of course, the girls and I kept ourselves totally reserved and quiet. Pause, not. It was like housewives gone wild. We were hooping and hollering like we were on the biggest roller coaster of our lives. We’ve already made plans to go back next week. Without the kids. Okay, maybe not. But, seriously … we are taking the kids back at least once more before Christmas and are intending to wear that train ride out! We may even make it a goal to get banned.

 

After Santa, we went to grab some dinner. Hello, Poutine! Best friends, Santa, train rides and poutine all in one afternoon? I can hardly handle it! During dinner, Evalyn kept asking over and over again if we could see Santa again.

So, duh. We did. And this time, we managed to snag this beauty …Imagine a world where you get a picture of Santa with three moms and four kids and everyone is looking at the camera! My pictures aren’t the greatest because I only had my phone. I figured we wouldn’t be allowed to take our own photos so I didn’t even bother with my camera. I will know better for next time. They let us take as many as we wanted and we didn’t have to pay for their over priced lame photos.

Before heading home we may or may not have taken another spin around the train. Can you blame us? I mean, really.

If this wasn’t enough to get me in the holiday spirit, we have been wearing Christmas PJs, watching Christmas shows, reading Christmas books, playing with Christmas toys and wrapping Christmas presents like crazy around here. We don’t have our tree or decorations up (this weekend, folks) but we are in the spirit around here, nonetheless. I am so excited for this year – Gwen’s first Christmas, our first Christmas in our new home and the first year that Evalyn is showing some major excitement and understanding about the holiday season.

It’s going to be a fun, fun month.

Christmas in Short Form

As evidenced by the lack of posting over the past two weeks, it’s safe to say that we’ve been enjoying our holidays. We really, really have. Despite the fact that traveling exhausts our wee family and we’ve been battling a few different types of sickies over the past month, we did our best to soak up this holiday season. Having time off from work has rejuvenated me so much. I’ve read an entire book series, finished and ordered Evalyn’s first year photo book, done some much needed reorganization around the house, and napped. A lot. It’s been wonderful. And since the holiday season has flown by without so much as a single blog post from me, I decided to just write a little quicky to sum up the last three weeks of our lives.

I spent so much of my time savouring the moments and the details that I found I was left with relatively few photos. But that’s okay. Because I was there, in the moments, always.

We kicked off our holiday season by traveling to visit Evan’s family. We played with cousins. We ate. We danced. We decorated Nana’s tree. We opened our Christmas PJs and book. We opened our stockings. We didn’t sleep, at all. We cut our first two molars. We opened gifts. We played outside on the sled. We had fun.

We then came home for almost a week before heading to my parent’s cottage in the Muskokas for Christmas weekend. While we were there, we played. Hard. We didn’t sleep, at all, again. We got two more molars. We had a cold. Mama had a cold. Daddy was getting over the flu. We rode a reindeer. We decorated the most Charlie Brown’ish tree that you ever did see. It was perfect. We got a kitchen and some play food. We walked in the snow. We loved on our Nana. We kissed our Uncle. We played. We played. And we played some more.

We came home on the 27th, a day earlier than we had planned, because sleeping was not happening and we were all too exhausted. Despite that, though, we had a good time. The past week at home has been spent enjoying lazy days. Cleaning up from the chaos of Christmas. Ringing in the New Year with good friends.

This week, Evan is back to his regular schedule and Evalyn and I are working on getting back to ours. She goes back to daycare tomorrow, and I have work to do to tie up last term and get ready for the new term to begin next week. We’ve enjoyed our small break from reality, but I’m ready to get back to normal.

Welcome, 2012! Here’s to a great year.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours. May your holiday season be filled with peace, joy, and the love of Christ!

Jolly Old St. Nick

If you are around these parts this time last year, you may remember that Evalyn had a grand old time visiting Mr. Claus at the mall.

It was definitely hard to beat last year’s photo, but this year she had just as great of a time. As soon as she saw him she asked me to get out of her stroller and kept saying “Ho, ho, ho peas. Ho, ho peas”. She had no hesitation going to sit on his knee and started saying “Cheeeee” for the camera right away.

What a difference a year makes! (Excuse the quality of this year’s photo, it’s a picture of a picture since I didn’t get digital copies yet and haven't been able to scan it).

Let the holiday season begin.

Calling All Christmas Fairies!

This is the part of Christmas that I don’t like.

The cleanup.

Ick. Blech.

I am currently sitting in my house staring at a pile of cardboard from boxes of toys that Evalyn for for Christmas, a billion piles of Christmas decorations waiting to be boxed up and put back into the storage room, a cupboard full of Christmas dishes that need to be swapped for our regular dishes, two piles of gifts that are looking for a home, and floors that are in desperate need of a good vacuum, swiffer and mop.

And yet, here I sit.

Looking at it all.

Wishing that it would clean itself up.

I was (not so) secretly hoping that if I gathered everything into tidy piles, the Dude would get the hint and box everything up and help it all find the way to it’s home. But, much to my chagrin, he got home from work last night feeling as though a truck ran over him, so I clearly could not bring myself to ask him to do it.

And now here we are, nearing the end of Eva’s first nap of the day and none of the piles have been touched.

Granted, I haven’t been entirely lazy this morning. I did make some phone calls, reorganize the baby’s armoire, make my bed, and sip away at a cafe mocha – but I have not even begun to tackle the daunting task of putting away.

I’m calling ALL Christmas Fairies to sweep in and put my house back in order.

Phew!

Wow! We survived the holidays and now that we are home, I feel like I need a vacation to recover from our vacation. Traveling is a little more, shall we say, complex, when you have a little one, that’s for sure. But all in all, we had a wonderful time away with our families and we are all glad to be back home, sleeping in our own rooms and in our own beds.

We started our holiday celebrations around noon on Christmas Eve when the Dude came home early. We enjoyed a relaxing afternoon together as a family. We tried to get some pictures but evidently, we are not a family of photographers. So, they suck. But at least we have proof that we were all there.

While I put the babes to bed, the Dude put together a delicious feast of battered yumminess. No better way to kick of the holidays than by eating a plate full of cholesterol.

After enjoying a relaxing evening together, we headed to bed and hoped that Santa would make an appearance at our place. When we woke up the next morning, Evalyn was pumped to discover that he had. We exchanged gifts with each other and Eva was as patient as could be as she chilled in her bouncy seat and watched all the action.

When we were done, we put her down for her nap and went crazy packing and getting ready for our week away. We took down our tree (um ya, at 9 am on Christmas Day!), organized all the gifts and packed the car. When the babe got up from her nap, I fed her and we were off.

We spent the next few days with the Dude’s family. On the 27th, we had a mock Christmas morning with his parents, siblings and nieces and nephews. That afternoon, we had a delicious meal, played games, exchanged gifts, and went skating with his extended family. I’m serious – there is never a dull moment with this family. Ever.

On the morning of the 28th, we packed ‘er all up again and headed to visit with my family for the remainder of the week. There we played games, relaxed, the Dude did some work for a friend and for my Dad, and we just enjoyed the time with our family. I don’t have very many photos from our time together. My brother is the photog so I leave that up to him.

On Thursday night, my Grandparents came over for dinner. I always always always love getting to see my Grandma interact with Eva. It is so special.

Friday (which was New Year’s Eve for the rest of you) was Christmas eve for my family. We hung out together all day and then after the kids were in bed indulged in a delicious feast of appetizers. We determined that we have been having an “appetizer meal” on Christmas eve since 1993! That’s quite a tradition.

Sadly, none of us, except my SIL made it to midnight to ring in the New Year. The rest of us were all of the opinion that the sooner you go to bed, the sooner Santa will get there. And some of us (not mentioning any names) went to bed early because they were pretty sure their daughter would not be letting them get much sleep that night. Ahem – me.

We woke up on New Year’s Day to discover that Santa had arrived once again! We all gathered in the living room for the festivities. We all open our stockings together at once, clean up the mess from that (because, yeah, Santa WRAPS the stocking gifts) and then pass out the “under the tree gifts”. Once everyone has their pile, we go one by one and watch each other open the gifts. It’s relaxing and enjoyable that way! It was so fun this year because Little H is now at the age where he gets it. He really gets what’s going on. He was excited to leave cookies and milk for Santa and to see the presents in the morning! He was also so patient and cute as he waited for his turn each time.

We headed home with a jam packed car on Sunday after. When we unloaded, it looked as thought Christmas threw up in our dining room.

I’m spending this week slowly getting this organized and put back in place. It feels like I just got my Christmas decos out and now it’s time to put them away.

Goodbye Christmas! We’ll see you again next year.

Checking In

Hello, friends! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with your family and friends.

We sure did.

And guess what?

It ain’t over yet!

In fact, for us, it’s barely even started. We celebrated Christmas morning, just the three of us, together in our own home. And let me tell you, we loved it. Loved loved loved it. No better way to spend our daughter’s first Christmas. We can’t wait to spend more years together that way.

After that, we took off to the Dude’s folk’s place and spent a few days there. We celebrated Christmas with both his immediate and extended family and had a blast.

I definitely have a ton of photos but haven’t even taken the time to upload them.

Now, we’re at my folks place and my entire family (minus one BIL who will be arriving later this week) is here. How great to be together.

We’ll be having “Christmas eve” on Friday and “Christmas morning” on Saturday and I can hardly wait.

Even though I don’t have any Christmas photos to share with you, I thought I better not let you go so long without seeing any pics of my sweet girl.

A few weeks back, my bro and SIL were at our place for the day so we had a little impromptu photo shoot of my lady.

 

I have said it before and I certainly will say it again – having a photographer brother is the bees knees!

Merry Christmas To All, and To All a Goodnight

Here we are. Christmas Eve Eve (Don’t worry Sam – I’m on your team – Christmas Eve Eve definitely exists).

Our gifts are wrapped (at least mine are – I think the Dude has yet to start his wrapping. He thought he could pay me to do it but considering Eva and I are the only ones he bought for, I vetoed that idea).

Our stockings are hung.

Our bags are packed (or, um, are in the process of being packed).

And we are nearly ready to celebrate our first Christmas as a family of four …. yes, Nika still exists …. no we’re not expecting another baby.

Tomorrow the Dude will be working a partial day. Then we’ll spend the afternoon as a family.

In the evening, we’ll head to M&Ls for food and games.

Then we’ll come home, and for the first time ever, we’ll tuck ourselves into our very own bed in our very own home on Christmas eve.

We will wake up on Christmas morning (and most likely a few times before that unless Eva wants to give me a real nice present) and open the stockings that Santa will have left here the night before. Then we’ll grab some breakfast and return to the tree to give each other our gifts.

Then I’ll wash Eva’s diapers while E takes down the tree (sorry – the magic of Christmas only goes so far, we still have to be realistic), pack up our stuff and head up north to visit the Dude’s family.

We’ll spend a few days there laughing, eating, visiting, eating, opening presents, and eating.

Then we’ll head to my folks’ place to spend a few days with my family and celebrate our Christmas over New Years.

And I couldn’t be more excited!

Although it’s special every year, this year Christmas feels even more special because I’ll have my girl by my side (or, um, on my boob) the whole time.

She is the most blessed Christmas gift we could ever imagine. In fact, she was our Christmas gift last year, we just didn’t know it yet ;)

I’m sure I’ll pop in at some point here and there over the holidays, especially if there are any blog worthy moments to share, but I don’t plan on spending a lot of time online.

I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I pray rich blessings on you and your families this holiday season and in 2011.

Merry Christmas from my family to yours.

(Updated to add: Yes, this is our real Christmas card that we sent out this year)

Silent Sunday–Chillin’ with the Big Guy

 

Christmas Baking

My mom and dad are heading down to visit today so that my Mom and I can do our Christmas baking. Then, tonight, Eva is staying home with Daddy and Grandpa while Mommy and Nana go to see Harry Potter! I am SO excited.

Since I’ve been busy getting ready to do Christmas baking, I didn’t have a chance to write a real post so I thought I would just republish a post I wrote two Christmases ago about Christmas baking.

~~~

It's that time of year. I can hardly believe that Christmas is only two weeks away. As we all know, this time of year has a way of getting rather expensive rather quickly. If you are like me and you enjoy having a variety of baked goodies kicking around during the holidays, this can end up being an added expense. So, with the help of my father, last night I devised a strategy to cut back costs on Christmas baking. There are five steps you need to take to significantly decrease the expense:

1. Plan - make a list of all the things you are going to bake. Try to choose a number of recipes that include the same ingredients. For example, if you have a recipe that calls for 1 cup of chocolate chips (1/2 a bag) then try to find another one that calls for 1 cup as well so you can maximize that purchase. Once you have a list of all of your recipes, make a list of the ingredients you will need so you are sure to get everything required and avoid unnecessary purchases.

2. Drive - Travel a short distance to the house of an unsuspecting woman, who also likes to bake. Mothers and mother-in-laws work perfectly.

3. Scrounge - Sift through the cupboards of this unsuspecting woman while she is at work to see which ingredients she already has in her cupboard and then cross said ingredients off your list.

4. Shop - Have the unsuspecting woman accompany you to the grocery store to pick up the rest of your supplies where she will undoubtedly pay for the entire purchase.

5. Enjoy a day of baking with the unsuspecting woman, who, upon completion, will tell you that this is far too much baking for her to keep around the house for the holidays and send half of it home with you.
I estimate this plan will save you anywhere between $30-80 per year (depending how much you like to bake). There you have it. It has worked for me for the past three Christmases. It's foolproof.

~~~

The only trouble is – this year with my Mom coming here … I am the unsuspecting woman!

One more for the road....

Join in for the last random dozen of the year as 2009 comes to a close. Click on the button below to link up!

1. Do you find it gross to share drinks with family? Friends? No. I'm not really a germaphoby type person. In fact, I've been known to use the FD's toothbrush on occasion when absolutely necessary so I would say that sharing a drink with him is mild in comparison. I probably wouldn't share a drink with a complete stranger but if I knew you for at least 5 minutes, I would.

2. What have you learned this year? (You didn't see a question of that weight coming, did you? At least not for #2.) I'm going to stick with an easy answer - I have learned that baking my own bread is not as difficult or time consuming as I would have thought. In January 2009 I made a goal to stop buying bread and start baking my own. And, aside from one package of store bought tortillas purchased in an "emergency" in February, I have not purchased a single bread product for a year. I have learned a lot about being more homemade than I ever thought I would be. I have learned a lot about being a frugal homemaker... there is still much to learn, but I think the way I do "home" has changed so much over the past year.

3. When do you dismantle the Christmas decorations? Well, we set a record this year for the earliest Christmas tree taker downers ever. In fact, on boxing day, my uncle said that if we ever do that again, we should let them know and make some sort of deal, since they were putting up their tree the same day we were taking ours down! On a normal year (read: a year when my tree doesn't completely die a week before Christmas), we take down our tree and our decorations in early January. The rest of my Christmas decorations are still up and will be put away sometime next week.

4. Something you wish to accomplish before the end of 2009 is: Enjoy a few more days of holidays whilst visiting with some dear friends.

5. How do you feel about winter (after Christmas)? It is ballZ. With a capital Z. Especially since winter officially started for us two days after Christmas.

6. Have you participated in after-Christmas sales? Yes. Although here in Canada, we prefer to call them Boxing Day Sales. I bought all of my wrapping supplies for next year, a Christmas door mat, salt and pepper shakers to match my Christmas dishes, a wall calendar and some clothes and shoes all for great prices. They practically paid me to buy all that stuff. You'd be stupid not to.

7. Do you have plans for New Year's Eve? I do believe we'll be hosting a wee gathering with some of our closest friends. Snacking on munchies, playing games, and attempting to set a record for the most people we can squeeze into our wee home overnight.

8. Is there anything special awaiting you in January? Two new classes of students, my husband's birthday, a weekend with my nephew, a visit to some family in the states, bridesmaid dress shopping, baby showering, and an 80th birthday party.

9. If your life this year was a movie, what category or genre would it be? (Romance, Comedy, Drama, Thriller, Suspense, Farcical, etc.) My life as a movie would definitely be the same genre as Julie and Julia. A biography/drama/comedy. I watched it over the holidays with my entire family and what was more entertaining than the movie was seeing them laugh at all the parts that reminded them of me. "It's like my readers need me, in a way. Like I fill a void in their life. That they would be somehow void if I didn't write".

10. How much time per day do you spend blogging? Please do not lie. I will know. I average about 1-2 hours daily.

11. Who runs your household? Her.

12. Share one hope/dream for 2010. Thanks to the encouragement and inspiration from two fabulous gals, SnoWhite and Jenny, my goal is to read the entire new testament in 2010.

A Holly Jolly Christmas

Well, the first batch of bread that I mixed and kneaded in my sweet new Kitchenaid stand mixer is currently rising atop the stove covered in a cute pastel green bowl so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for me to sit down and write up a Christmas recap post! I've got photos but they're not great - my brother is the photographer in the family so most of the time I just leave my camera in my purse and let him take the pictures. BUT, I haven't been able to get a copy of his pictures yet, so I just had to make do with what I had.

Since the post I wrote about our own little Christmas was devoid of photos, I'll begin by sharing a few of those photos ....

On Friday night, the table was set all fancy like, with a huge spread of food (far too much for just the two of us!)

On Saturday morning, we opened our stockings and then lazed around for the rest of the day.

The fabulous dude was so excited about his stocking gifts

Saturday evening, we got all dolled up and headed out to dinner

So that's that! Now moving on ... I headed to my hometown on the 20th to spend a few days with my mom, my sister, and Little H. We spent our days making lists (surprised?), getting groceries, preparing food, and enjoying each other's company. The rest of the family joined us on the 23rd (minus BIL who couldn't get there until Christmas Eve).

Most of our days were spent playing games, eating tons of food, and just hanging out. My brother and SIL got my dad the Rockband Country Pack for his birthday so we had a lot of fun with that over the holidays. Everyone had a blast playing .... the young and the old! I just loved watching my Grandpa sing "The Gambler".

On Christmas Eve, we had lunch at my parent's store with all of their employees and had a delicious dinner of our favourite finger foods and appetizers (some recipes will be posted over the next little while).

We had a few heated games of pictionary - Kirkland borns versus NON-Kirkland borns. As you can see by the easel set up - we are serious about our pictionary! .

Then we all went to bed for a night of little sleep. We are seriously all like children on Christmas eve ... we cannot sleep and we just count the hours until we're allowed to get up. This year, Little H fussed a little bit around 4:45 but went back to sleep. Once we finally got up at SIX am, we all admitted that since he had cried at 4:45 we were all just waiting waiting waiting for someone to make the move and get up so we could all run like 5 year olds to the living room and start shaking our presents.

The morning was spent opening our stockings and our gifts. We like to savour this time - it took us almost 4 hours to open our gifts. We go one by one and show everyone everything we get.

This was the year of the kitchen for me! Although I got a few items of clothing and some books and DVDs, the bulk of my gifts were geared toward my love of cooking. Of course, the KitchenAid Stand mixer takes the cake! I was so surprised (as you can tell in the photo - please note the traditional Christmas morning sweater).

I hadn't even asked Santa for it but I guess he (er - she) knows me so well that she knew I'd love it. Thanks, Mama ... I mean, Santa! I also got some cute pastel mixing bowls, stemless wine glasses, cooking presses and decorating supplies, utensils and so on!

The boys in our family, FD, Brother, BIL, were all very excited when they opened their joint gift from Dad Santa - a fishing trip at a resort in Quebec for this summer. How fun!

Even though this is Little H's second Christmas, it was even more exciting than last. When he woke up and walked into the living room with is daddy and saw all of the presents, his eyes got really wide and he said "Wow-y". He got bored of opening presents after about 5 minutes, but he had tons of fun playing with all of his new toys and thought playing in the leftover paper was a blast!

The rest of Christmas day was spent eating brunch, watching movies, playing games, and eating Christmas dinner.

On Boxing Day (all you Americans, click here if you don't know what Boxing Day is) my grandparents, aunt and uncle and cousins came over for Christmas dinner. Again, we had a day of games, food, and relaxing ... I'm beginning to see a theme here.

My mom had a present wrapped for my grandma and I to open. I think I've mentioned before that my parents live in the house my grandparents used to live in and their store manager lives in the house I grew up in. Apparently, he was moving some shelving units around in the basement of my old house, and came across this. We guessed I probably made it when I was about 8 years old. We all got a kick out of this! If you can't read it, it says "Congratulations to Phil Kirkland. You are awarded for being the best Grandmother in the world. Signed, Lindsay Kirkland".

The siblings all left my parents house on Sunday to either go back to work or to their other families Christmases, but the FD and I stayed until Monday evening. On Sunday we went to see Sherlock Holmes, which I thought was pretty good. And then, on Monday, my mom and I headed to the city near them to do some Boxing Day shopping! I was impressed with the deals that were available!

After that, we went back to my parents house, had some dinner and then packed up to come home. We arrived home yesterday evening, unpacked the car, threw a load of laundry in and crashed. I've spent today reorganizing things, cleaning, and doing laundry in preparation for our company to arrive tomorrow and stay until the end of the week!

Christmas seemed to go by so quickly this year, but it was a wonderful time spent with our families and friends. The countdown to next Christmas starts NOW!

A Christmas Dream Come True

I obviously have a ton of Christmas updates to post about... we'll be home in a few days and I'll get to it then.

But for now, I feel it's necessary to share the most imporant news....

I GOT A KITCHENAID STAND MIXER.

My dream has come true!

(N)O Christmas Tree

Guess what we did on Saturday after we opened our presents?

We took down our Christmas tree. I'm sure that seems strange - especially if you were putting up your tree on the very same day.

But here's the deal - the tree had served it's purpose at our house. We had celebrated Cramp Christmas the weekend before, our own Christmas that morning, and I was packing up and getting ready to head to my parents for the week. It just seemed logical to take it down. And I'm glad we did - it means one less thing to do on the one day we have between getting home from my parents and welcoming our company who is coming for New Years.

Plus, the tree was dead. Like, really really dead. Like, more dead than I have ever seen. Over the past week, anytime anything touched the tree, and even at random times, we would hear a sprinkling of pine needles hitting the floor. Everyone in my family is getting extra lucky this year, with a side of pine needles included in their gift.

I remember always cleaning up the trail of pine needles that were left in the wake of my dad lugging our tree out to the curb. But this was something entirely different. There wasn't much of a trail of needles marking the tree's path out to the patio ... because there were no needles left on the tree. The entire tree's worth of needles were laying on the floor around the Christmas tree base.

I have never seen anything like this. Apparently if a tree becomes completely dry, the base of the tree seals itself back up. I'm going to guess this is what happened. While the dude was away hunting and I went to my mom's do Christmas baking, I think the tree sucked up all the water. Because after that, I never had to water it again. The base was always full. Clearly, the tree was not getting any water. Please do not let this happen to your tree. It is sad. It is messy. And, after two weeks, the water starts to smell like poop. Sorry, but it's true.

Here are some pictures to demonstrate just how sad our tree was by the last day. (Sorry the pictures are in a crazy order. As I said yesterday, I can't seem to rearrange the order of the photos on either my mom or dad's laptops). They go in backwards - documenting first what the floor looked like after we took the tree out and then ending with a photo of what the branches looked like with the decorations still on. I've also added another picture of what our tree looked like when we first put it up at the beginning of the post (because I cannot move it to the end) for you to see the difference. If you feel so inclined, look at the photos in backwards order.

The evidence that a Christmas tree once existed here.
Logi and Evan stopped by for a bit so she helped me take down the decorations.
You know you're happy that you get to see me wearing my traditional Christmas garb. The Christmas pants and reindeer sweater are a steadfast tradition!
The sad, droopy branches.
This is what the tree looked like before we started taking down the decorations.
Sad isn't it?