Let the fun begin!

Now that all the gifts have been unwrapped and everyone has eaten more then a weeks worth of food in one setting, it's time to play with all the gifts - and let me sleep in until noon - Thank you so much Ski, I needed it!!!! Cadence was so excited to set up her tent today.

As you can see - she had a few visitors!!!

I found Ski in our room learning to play his new guitar. This year on my Christmas list I asked him to write me a love letter. Well, as always my husband did not disappoint. I started crying about the first paragraph and cried through out all three pages that he wrote. It was the sweetest thing I've ever read! It wasn't just the pregnant hormones either! Well next year he says his goal is to learn to play the guitar and to write me a song! I can't wait to hear it. He likes to pretend he isn't a romantic at heart but I will let you all know, in his own little way he is very romantic.

As for Jacqui and Matt - I have hardly seen them all day to even take a picture of them with their new stuff. They have been out running around the neighborhood.

A look inside the Ski Christmas!

On Christmas Eve I asked Matt "Are you excited about Christmas buddy??"

He replied "No - I'm really not thinking about it all that much."

Well that night the kids went to bed at 9pm. Matt woke up at 11:30pm, and midnight. At 2:30am he woke up again so I told him to go turn on his TV and watch it till he fell asleep. At 4:30am he woke me up again. In between that, Cadence woke us up to go potty and ended up getting in bed with us which is always real comfortable especially now that my belly is HUGE. At 7 am Matt woke us up again. No - he wasn't excited at all!!!! By that time I couldn't sleep anymore but Ski wanted another hour. So I got up and poured Matt a glass of milk, me a glass of water and I went into his room to share some cookies and milk with him before everyone woke up. Would you believe it, he was finally asleep again! So there I sat - the only one awake. Finally at 8am everyone woke up to this...

Santa had even finished all his cookies and milk, fed his reindeer and wrote Cadence a letter back! He also left a bone for each of the dogs on the table and some circus tickets for all of us to go to the circus in February.

If you remember from the previous posts, all Cadence wanted Santa to bring her was Scooby Doo toys. Here is the look on her face when she got them!!!!

The rest are pretty self explanatory. They are just a look inside of our Christmas morning!!!!

I can honestly say none of us need anything for quite a while. Thank you to everyone who sent us gifts and we hope everyone had a GREAT Christmas!

Decorating the Christmas Tree

Every year, we put up our tree the weekend after Thanksgiving. It always an interesting day filled with Jacqui and Matt putting up the lights while arguing the entire time, and Ski watching and shaking his head while I take pictures. Caders just runs around going crazy as usual!

Below we have our festive Jacqui wearing the tree skirt and doing a little dance!

The kids putting the lights on tree. Notice Cadence going around and around with them even though there isn't a string of lights on there. She thought she was such a big helper!

I find it amazing that in the above picture, Cadence is carrying an EMPTY light organizing string thing, yet Matt still holds a wade of lights all tangled up. How does that happen? Good picture of my handsome boy though!!!

This is the madness that is my house on the day that we decorate the tree!

Matt made Cadence MAD so she got all up in his face. My girl don't back down to anyone!!!

And when she thinks no one is taking her seriously she finds a way to make them! Look at Matt's unsuspecting face!!! Don't worry - I yelled before she actually hit him. No need for violence when we are decorating for Christmas!!

Uh oh - it's not all smiles and mistletoe around here!! Jacqui made her feel better - she thought Matt should get hit by the umbrella too!

The day isn't complete until Ski does something to make us all laugh!!!

A few years ago I used to just open the box and let the kids grab ornaments and just put them on the tree. I can't tell you how many times they went for the same one and ended up in a fist fight. (It's lovely having kids so close in age) so I started a rule that we go through the ornaments one by one while I'm sitting there to intervene. Jacqui picks, then Matt etc.

Cadence now gets her own pile too.

She loves getting her own pile!!! She was on a mission.


How sweet - they are all working together so nicely!!!!

In about five seconds they are about to start kicking each other...

Tradition up until this point is that Jacqui puts the topper on. I hate this particular tree topper but this year Cadence told me it was beautiful so I couldn't get rid of it on her!!!

The finished product!

This was the first year we actually had a fireplace that we could hang our stockings on. We even had one for Baby Ski!!!! Notice the snowman picture frame on the left. Ski's mom got this for me a few years back and I always say I'm going to put pictures in it. Well, as you can see, as with many frames around my house, it still sits just as it did the day I got it!!!

Below are some of my favorite things about Christmas..... most go back to Christmases of the past when my whole family would get together at my Grandma and Grandpa's house!

This picture.
It was a piece of my Grandma's table cloth that she'd use every Christmas on her table. She knew my Aunt Dee Dee loved it and on her last Christmas with us she gave it to her. My aunt kept saying "Ma your going to need it next year!!" and my grandma must have known because she kept saying "We'll see" Well, that next year, she passed away the day after Thanksgiving. A few years later I got a gift in the mail from my aunt (so did the rest of my family) and she had cut it into little pieces for us and framed them so that we could all have a little piece of the table cloth she loved so much and a little piece of our grandma each Christmas. I still get tears in my eyes whenever I take this out each year and read her little note.

I finally have a nativity set and I'm so excited. My grandma used to have one that sat on the stairway going upstairs and every year me and my cousins would play with all the people and animals she sat around it. I am surprised we didn't lose any of them!!! I'm not sure who has the nativity set now but this one was as close to it as I could find.

I found this bowl at Cracker barrel for $9.00. For many years we used to make fun of my Grandma because she had this chicken bowl on her coffee table and she would always say "There's peanuts in the Chicken" It was one of those sentences that you just don't hear everyday! Well when Ski saw this he started calling it the "Santa Ass" The night that I filled it I told them all "There's candy in the Santa Ass" and I swear it was like my Grandma's words came flying out of my mouth!!!

And I would like to say a special "THANK YOU!" to my sister who took all the pictures while we were setting up the tree. Of course, no one took the camera from her and actually took a picture of HER!!! Glad you could be with us!!!

Christmas - in a nut shell!

Well, here it is - the update! I've gotten so many emails asking "Hey - are you going to post on your blog soon??? Hello - where are you???"

I'm here - still in North Carolina. Still not doing much of anything...which includes blogs lately!

Anyway - Christmas! It was great! We went to Ohio to spend the holidays with Ski's family. We officially do not need anything else at this point - especially toys! I've also had my fill of cat allergies for the next little while!

Before we went, we got to enjoy our tree for all of about 8 minutes. But atleast the kids had fun decorating it!

We also opened most of our gifts before we went up to Ohio so that we didn't have to travel with so much stuff. It turned out, that was a really good idea! However, after Ski got a taste of what Matt's guitar hero was all about, it's all he could think about getting back to once vacation was over!
Grandma (Or GG as Cadence started calling her) had a blast hanging out with the kids. They made cookies and went to the zoo and the movies! Ski and I took advantage of time with no kids and went shopping. Not only did I get Ski into a store - but it was also the day after Christmas when the mall was completely insane. Wish I could bottle that kind of persuasion up for use at a later time!!!
It was so much fun to see my sister in law Noel with her cute pregnant belly! We are all so excited to meet little celest when she makes her grand entrance into the world!

The mom and dad to be!!! He looks real "hard" now but wait till you see him wrapped around his little girls finger! It'll be another Ski and Cadence all over again!

God bless their redneck hearts - cleaning their guns after going shooting!

Christmas morning!

She had a rough time this year with her birthday being on Christmas day!The GG's

Matt was the only one that dressed up. Here he is in front of the "fire"

Pork and Kathy drove down from Rogers City to spend the holidays with all of us!

Me and Kathy!

Those two are always messing with each other!

The highlight of Matt's trip was shooting the pellet gun - and of course it just melts my heart to see him teaching her how to shoot! I'm just glad she wasn't pointing it in his direction.

Hope everyone had a great holiday!