Christmas Day

As the day progressed, we all converged to my sister's house for Christmas dinner. Another feast and another 5 pounds, no doubt...*sigh.* Time for those new year's resolutions again, I think.

It's always difficult to get the kids to eat at other people's houses because there is so much going on and/or the food may be a little different than they are  used to or they are just too excited to talk and play with their cousins, but the added incentive of more Christmas gifts and dessert after dinner is usually a pretty good incentive.

We actually managed to leave at a decent time from all the festivities this time. Although Caitlyn is not sick anymore and I am getting better, Emily and Christian are now sick as the cold cycles through our household. So much to share this holiday season, I wish the sicknesses was not shared quite so freely.

Christmas Morning

As per our usual tradition, Auntie Marian comes over for dinner on Christmas Eve. We had a sumptuous dinner of french onion soup, prime rib, sweet potatoes and corn. Auntie Marian played games and did crafts with the girls while we prepared dinner. We stayed up way too late finishing presents, filling stockings, and talking.

Come Christmas morning, mostly everyone is up and ready to go pretty early still. Grandpa Caldwell, gave the girls an Amazon gift card for Christmas this year, so we promptly ordered them real sleeping bags since they really needed them and they were on sale. They got here just in time for Christmas! Now they don't have to freeze their little butts off in princess and other play sleeping bags meant only for sleep overs when we go camping. The girls were so excited. Caitlyn found an extra surprise in her sleeping bag.

We all got lots of things we wanted and some we even needed! The living room looked like a bomb hit it afterwards.

We celebrate with our traditional belgian waffle breakfast and then we clean up to prepare for the next event! It's pretty exhausting given that we never quite get enough sleep the night before. This year, we had the added benefit of also being sick, so that certainly didn't help!

Caldwell Christmas

We went down to San Diego on Saturday to celebrate Christmas with Christian's family. We had decided early on that we would not do quite so much with presents for everybody this year. We decided that we would take the kids to do something fun and special instead. We decided to take them ice skating. Which actually presented some real problems. It was so crowded that we couldn't park any where. Plus, there were tons of people on the ice. To make matters worse, the people that run the ice rink are a bunch of morons....but we won't get into too much of that here. It mostly worked out in the end (mostly thanks to Uncle Mike), but it wasn't that good of an experience for all the adults who went. The kids don't know any better. They just wanted to get out on the ice...which they almost didn't get to do. But I digress...the kids did really great. It was difficult. They fell a lot. It hurt, but they got right back up and tried again.

Christian went out on the ice with the girls. I don't know how to ice skate and would not be of much help to the kids, so I decided to take pictures instead. It was really difficult to take pictures. There wasn't very much light. It was crowded, everybody was moving pretty fast and every once and a while, they were turn the lights down more and have their disco lights on but I managed to get a few for posterity.

It still ended too soon for the kids. With all the problems that we ran into, they really only got about 45 minutes out on the ice.

We returned to the family's house afterwards to work on dinner. We handed out a few presents.

The kids worked on gingerbread houses. Aunt Erin made real gingerbread for their houses this year!

They made some ornaments and other crafts with their Aunt Danielle.

The kids had a long fun filled day. Plus they got to play together which is always a treat since they don't get to see each other very often.

A special thank you to Christian's family who made the day so special for the girls. We love you.

Christmas Spirit

I've been trying really hard to keep the Christmas Spirit around here despite all the stress the season brings...or despite the stress we put on ourselves during this season. I usually have all my Christmas shopping done by Thanksgiving. Some years I have even gotten it done by Halloween so that I don't have that hanging over me and so I don't have to go out there with all the other stressed out and desperate Christmas shoppers.

This year, Thanksgiving came and went and I did not even begin. But reality hit and I got to work and I got it all taken care of eventually. I even got my Christmas projects done as well. Most of the presents are even wrapped and ready to go.

And yet, I am still struggling and that is because ever since the girls took off for nearly a week and a half for Thanksgiving, I have been fighting with them everyday to do their homework and get their chores done. They just can't get back into the groove of things. It has been two and a half weeks since we have been back in school and it is still the same thing. In another week and a half, they will be off for another two weeks. I am not looking forward to the new year. They may be the death of me.

And then you add the constant whining and complaining about the simple things they are supposed to do everyday and fighting. Throw in the constant excuses of why they aren't or don't want to do what they are supposed to be doing. It's enough to drive anyone mad.

I want to just cancel Christmas for them...stick with the real purpose of Christmas. One of these years, I may just do it. They may drive me to do it! I know they are just kids and are excited about Christmas, but what happened to trying not to be "naughty" because Santa knows who is naughty or nice? Mom and Dad certainly knows, and yet it seems to mean nothing to them.

I just have to try to relax, take a deep breath (all after fighting with them for usually nearly an hour to go to bed) and try to find the silver lining in the clouds...or rainbow.

Christmas Tree

Last year, we did our first stop motion video which featured our Christmas tree. It was really fun and turned out really cute, so we thought we would give it another shot.

As I had mentioned, we decorated with homemade ornaments this year, so we had salt dough ornaments and paper chains. Our friend Marian had strung thousands of tiny beads and glued them onto  foam balls one year for us. And we made popcorn chains that literally took hours to make. Christian had to make two huge batches of popcorn for us and we had to eat all the pieces that broke along the way  (we wouldn't want to waste, you know). The girls were so good about doing it and had lots of fun, even through pricking their fingers on the needles and everything. I guess the all you can eat popcorn helped a bit as well. This was also the kids chance to put up all their collected ornaments made from school and church.

Blogger only lets you insert little thumb size videos so they are hard to really see, so this year, Christian loaded it on Youtube so if you want a better look, you can click on the link and see a larger version of it. I love these videos. They are so fun!

Ward Christmas Party

Tonight was our ward's Christmas Party. We had dinner, then the Primary children sang a couple of songs.

All the girls get to dress up like angels. Most the boys are shepherds. Except for the oldest boy and girl are actually Mary and Joseph and the next eldest boys are the wise men. We even had a couple of nursery age kids that got to be miscellaneous animals. It's pretty cute, but we spend more time getting the costumes washed and matched and sorted than they do wearing them!

Plus Santa always drops by to talk to the kids. They seemed pretty excited about seeing Santa again but when it was time to see him, both of them were acting pretty shy. Neither of the girls would sit on Santa's lap anymore. I guess the days of cute pictures with Santa are pretty much over. Christian still managed to get a couple of nice shots of Santa talking to each of the girls.

Developing Talents

I've been teaching Emily how to crochet to help her develop talents to fulfill one of her Faith in God requirements. She has been slowly plugging away at it and is almost done with her second project. Her first project was a scarf and hat that came in a kit with a crochet hook that we got her for Christmas last year, but the project was obviously meant for a smaller child as the scarf is quite small. She has not gotten to the hat yet and I am afraid that it will also be small. Meanwhile, Caitlyn wanted to try her hand at it as well. She's a little younger and it takes a bit of patience and developing some of those fine motor skills for her fingers but we thought we would let her try.

She is actually quite creative and has the patience put the work into somewhat difficult things. Her Aunt Danielle and Uncle Mark got her a JoAnn's gift card for her last birthday. I barely took her towards the end of summer to go pick something out. She got some shells and beads and things, but she also picked out this friendship bracelet maker. I was a bit skeptical because Emily had gotten a different one for a Christmas a year and a half ago and has been a bit frustrated with it, but this one looked easier, so we though we would give it a try.

Caitlyn has done some amazing things with it. She is on her 6th bracelet! I am truly amazed at her creations. I love her watching her pick out color combinations and seeing the things she creates (and her friends and sister loves receiving them).

And wouldn't you know it, she just finished her first crochet project too. She made this scarf for her teacher for Christmas with her teacher's favorite colors.

We are so very proud of her!

Speaking of talents, we were having some people over our house for a meeting and I used it as an excuse to get my talented husband to mount and hang some of his photographs. We had them hanging at our Fig Street house but took many of the most precious ones down to have them remounted so that they would not get ruined but never had the time to really do it and so they sat in a box these many years.

They are the last of his real photographs made from real negatives on real photographic paper. We have since found many advantages to digital photography and the latest and greatest functions of Photoshop and now Lightroom. In many ways, modern digital photography allows us to do things we were never able to do in film, but they have yet to replicate the warm and feeling you get in looking at a real proper photographic print.

Also, our talented friends came by this weekend to sing Christmas carols to us. We appreciate them so much for sharing their talents with us. Best of all, when we can capture them on video, they bring the spirit of Christmas back to us any time when we are feeling overwhelmed or stressed. What a great gift!