Before I dive into Christmas cheer, I have to acknowledge something from my previous post. I clearly don't even know English very well. Brooke just pointed out to me that I used the word "heal" for the back of the foot, instead of "heel." In my defense... well, there is no defense. But spell-check wouldn't have caught it even if I had run it.
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Merry Christmas! The kids have thoroughly enjoyed this year's festivities. We had a little family Christmas on Friday morning where we presented them with a snow sled. This was a huge hit when we got up to my parents' house and tried it out in the backyard. As soon as Big Boy would stop sliding, he would yell, "Again!!!!" and Big Girl LOVED it. She had a difficult time giving up the sled so the adults could try it out. Scott and I agreed that we got our workouts that day!
We had a great visit with my side of the family. The kids did well on the road both directions, and were so excited to visit "gramma" and "grampa." Their church had a really good service Christmas day, which Big Boy did really well in. I ended up in the hallway with Little Girl and Big Girl, but that was ok. I could still hear a little bit and it beat wrestling with Little Girl the whole time. She played on a blanket with blocks most of the time. (I think Baby-wise's idea of blanket training is a good one and I need to work on that some more!) We decided that opening gifts in shifts would work best since we went to the service - the kids opened theirs before and then after we all had lunch and put the kids down for naps, we adults opened our gifts. Big Girl got a new CD/cassette player for her bedroom, which she is ecstatic about. She gets so excited when we turn on her favorite music in her room. We can program her Dynavox to be a remote, so if we put the Dynavox in her bed, she can control the player some. Big Boy got a huge box of train track for his Thomas trains and a pair of light-up Spiderman snow boots. It's hard to say which gift he loves the most!
Another big hit of the visit was making a gingerbread train. Big Girl didn't really get into it, but Big Boy really enjoyed decorating the "cookies" and putting them together. He put all the candy pieces on after we applied the icing glue, then declared that we needed to make a house. So, since we had leftover icing, we took graham crackers and built a train station. Then a couple days later, we ate it. Big Boy also got into the eating, of course.
My sister and I had been working for over a month on a Christmas tree skirt for mom. She LOVED it. I'm really happy with how it turned out. The pattern is a tough one to visualize. I'll post pictures tomorrow. We barely got it done in time - I worked on it all morning Thursday and then my sister stayed up til 2am Friday finishing her part and wrapping it up. I didn't get Scott's gift finished, but he didn't mind. Actually, it still isn't finished yet - but it's almost there. I am making him a bathrobe and gave him matching house shoes. It was interesting that he got me a thick, fluffy bathrobe too! Big Girl liked her hat and it fits her well. It's even a bit big, so she'll be able to wear it next winter too. The kids all liked the hooded towels I made them; they are really big and fluffy.
So, I have a few things still left on my to-do list! I have a couple things left on Scott's robe, the hat for my niece, and the tree skirt I'm making for myself. I ended up working on lots of other things today, like grocery shopping and trying to fix this computer. It keeps crashing. I thought I had found a big source of the problem, and I have fixed something. So we'll see. It's a little better.
