Family fills my heart with such joy and it doesn't always have to be blood family. We have friends in our lives that are very much part of our family. Christmas break came with such enthusiastic anticipation because I knew I would have everyone home.
There are things we do that from the outside would seem like a big disaster. Our holiday activities don't seem very Norman Rockwell-ish in all the chaos and yelling and challenging of each other to see who is the bigger boss, but it doesn't matter very much. We look forward to it and no one has anything less than great memories (as far as I know!)
You're never too old to play in the snow! To my recollection, this was a huge ordeal to get everyone to finally go outside and work on building a snow sled run together, but once they were all out there, they worked for hours!
There wasn't a lot of help happening from Esther.
Our tree was not our standard tree this year. We usually stay away from the soft wispy branches for fear they won't hold our ornaments, but we decided to give this one a try. It was so pretty. We didn't decorate it until Christmas Eve, which wasn't by my choice but that was the only time we weren't sick or had someone missing. We took it down the third weekend of January but I honestly would have loved to just keep it as long as it would have lasted!
At the point when we picked out our tree, we had been through a week of almost everyone throwing up. When we returned home, we went right into another week or so of influenza A. Our grade school closed early for break due to the number of kids and teachers that were home sick.
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| Willa's preschool Epiphany party. |
The nativity set fell from the mantle without warning. Josh and I spent the most part of a morning mending tiny little pieces. It is noticeable if you look closely but all of the pieces survived with some super glue.
I really have come to love the traditions we've created. They are so far from where my imagination had us when I was a young mother. So. Far. Time is good. Messy isn't as overwhelming as it used to be. Time together. Together. Merry merry Christmas.
