I love this time of year, everything about it. I shouldn't love the commercialism but even that adds a bit of the ambiance and extends the season a bit longer. I know this is not technically Jesus birthday and I have struggled in the past with how to approach this holiday. Do we ignore the existence of it? Should we celebrate with a cake for Jesus & no semblance of a tree, Santa, stockings, etc? Or do we go for the whole shebang? I haven't figured it all out by any means but I know for our family we enjoy this season. I really think Jesus would enjoy seeing us have a full blown party with presents. Since we can't give Jesus a present we can give them to each other. This season gives us a chance to look around and see what & who are most important in our lives and try to make them happy. We go out of our way to spend extra time with the kids, even if that just means curling up by the fire with a cup of hot cocoa to watch Frosty The Snowman on the family channel. Now, this is harder than it sounds since we live in FL & it's still 75 outside so we actually had to turn on the AC to get the house cold enough to make the fireplace bearable, LOL! And instead of actually drinking hot cocoa we settled for Hot Chocolate Ice Cream....but you get the point. We are really enjoying this season. We will leave this weekend for our annual trip to visit Eric's brother in Philadelphia. It's a long drive but we really enjoy our time together & we are breaking up the trip quite a bit this year so it won't be so hard on little Autumn. She is a trooper and has spent the majority of her short life travelling so I'm sure she will be fine.
We have made homemade stockings, homemade ornaments, homemade decorations, had a Christmas party with our friends, enjoyed driving around to view the lights, spent some time baking yummy goodies (& eating them), lots of Christmas shopping, and tomorrow we (the older girls & I) are off to dinner & the Nutcracker with friends. I am so grateful that through this whole season none of my children have become obsessed with what they want for Christmas, their biggest focus has been on what they want to get for their siblings. Although Katy does think that everything she sees that is pink belongs to her, "Das Mine" is heard constantly as I stroll through the store. Luckily, she hasn't been insistent that she bring it home with her!
We have taken time off from formal school work for the holidays but I am so glad to see the kids sneak in a little school even though they don't realize what they are doing. The older 3 love playing math games with Daddy & Katy enjoys looking at books, I even caught her sharing the Renoir book with Autumn who seemed very impressed. In all honesty I knew she was brilliant for a 17 week old!
We met our new neighbor, the kids were excited to know that he (or she) is one of 6 also, now they are not the biggest family on the block, that's a first, also having a tortoise as an outside pet is new for my kids also, much less 6 of them. I have been told to watch for wondering tortoise babies in our yard in the spring. How funny is that?!
This is our newest princess, all dressed up for the Christmas Party, isn't she precious!
And I just couldn't post pictures on my blog without a picture of the kids at the beach. We love it here!!!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!
