Our Christmas 2009

Four very excited children on Christmas morning!

Annagrace holding a precious little book she received about how a girl can be a little girl after God's own heart. The book goes through the fruits of the Spirit using beautifully illustrated pictures.

We have a family tradition of serving cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning. The recipe for these scrumtious rolls is called Pillsbury. ;)

Lauren's big gift was an Elsie Dinsmore doll. She is so excited!

My sweet Lauren crocheted this bag for me, and picked out Palmer's pregnancy lotion to put inside it. What a thoughtful and creative gift! Lauren has always loved to give to others.

On Christmas Eve we have a tradition of giving the kids new pajamas. They now know to expect new pajamas which is fun. Here is the group pajama picture. :)

Here we all are right before the Christmas Eve service.

It is hard to believe another year has almost come and gone. I think each year goes faster. We are thankful for the gift of Jesus and what He means to us. He is the giver of every good gift, and He is our real reason for celebration. I pray that we will love Him more faithfully in the year to come. He has been so faithful to us and is worthy of all of our heart's love and devotion.

Gingerbread House

I purchased a gingerbread house kit at Michael's, and our super fantastic Daddy over here helped the kids put it together while I was out finishing Christmas shopping. They did a great job!

A Very Rare Occasion

You will seldom see Matt and I all dressed up and heading out by ourselves like this. However, we recently had an evening out and the opportunity to get dressed up. We were dressed up in this picture to go to his work party at a restaurant. Just dressing up and going out alone with Matt is a rare treat. :)

My Crafty Girl

Lauren loves to do crafts. We use workboxes each day in our home school. There are twelve boxes that I load up with everything from the basic core subjects to good reading, fun sheets, computer time, etc. I usually put a fun craft in box twelve as an incentive to make it through them all. A couple of months back Lauren made this cute forest animals set. It was a Martha Stewart craft kit I bought really cheap at Big Lots. Everything was included to make this adorable set up out of pipe cleaners. She did a great job and even enjoyed showing it off during a presentation in her class at Classical Conversations. Her newest endeavor is learning to crochet. She is doing very well using much creativity in her little projects.

Snow!

Well, I did not believe the weather forecasters when they said we had a good chance of snow, but they were right! I have very seldom ever seen snow fall like it did yesterday. It was early on in December for such a snowfall too. It was exciting; the kids were so eager to get out in it. Our family walked around the water retention area in our neighborhood. It was a cold walk but magical to see everything covered in white. I told the children that the Lord blessed us with a special gift yesterday. It was also great that Daddy got to come home early from work. We just spent the day in the house with the fireplace going and watched Old Yeller as a family after dinner. It was a cozy kind of a day. What an unexpected blessing!