Christmas2011

What a fun season Christmas is. Having our new house has truly made all the difference. I had a place to hide presents, and a place to have people over for our "Ugly Christmas Sweater" party. That was on the 23rd and it was pretty fun. I did a little shopping at Goodwill and Walmart and voila, ugly outfit. The really nice part was having enough room for kids to party and stay out of our way (but not out of earshot!), and having plenty of parking.

Rebecca, Cyn, Katie, Nasca, and Jenny.

Rebecca and Katie obviously weren't in the "ugly sweater" mood.

I also enjoyed decorating the house for the holidays. When we went to get out tree Darren figured our front room could handle a tall tree. We got it home and it's a whole heck of a lot taller than it looked in the u-cut tree farm. We had to drag it over to the staircase to get the lights and ornaments on the top. We estimate it's height to be at about 15 feet. Not looking forward to unstringing the lights.

Gavin and Darren really wanted their Christmas pj's to be "real tree" camo. I lucked out and found some that are pretty close to real tree (as far as I'm concerned) at Walmart.

Darren got me the coolest present ever. He bought a Weeping Willow tree. My favorite kind of tree and I've been talking about wanting one in my yard since we moved here. The tree company comes and plants it and everything and guarantees it for a year. Hooray! So thoughtful. Oh, and I got a new vacuum, but that was out of necessity.

And now for the present that the kids and I got for Darren:

He named her Shadow and she is an adorable 6 week old Lab. And yes, I know that makes 4 dogs for us. And yes, I know that's crazy. But Darren has wanted a Lab forever-- a "real" dog as he says. It was always in our plan to have a Lab but in our other home it wouldn't have worked. Then along came George, Holly, and Roxy. But Roxy is pretty much like a guinea pig. We even brought her to the mall the other day to get Santa pictures. So anyway, the puppy reveal went pretty well. D took the kids to church this morning and I was too "sick" to go (actually my stomach really did hurt). Then I drove 10 minutes to where the puppy lived, luckily I found one close, and had her sleeping on his pillow when they got home from church. I believe he was genuinely surprised, and I was very relieved that he was happy.

Drew had a 6th grade Fun Run on the last day before break and this was her outfit.