Christmas Eve's Eve

After our exciting morning the rest of the family was glad to share in some festitivities. We elected Richard "Cheermeister" and he took the lead for the afternoon. First, we opened our stockings. This is one of my favorite times of the whole year as each member, in turn, reads aloud love notes from every member of the family.

The notes have evolved in meaning and vocabulary over the years. Sheridan was so into writing her own this year that several of us had more than one from her! And it doesn't ever get old being told you're an awesome mom!

I loved our polka-dot paper this year! For a fun twist each child picked their favorite candy and their gifts were labeled with it!

The Cheermeister makes everything fun! Lauren got some new music, Ryan loved his 2009 football scrapbook I made him, and Erin loved her new Panthers sweatshirt. Sheridan jumped up and down for the Arthur coloring book and new crayons and new skates, and the pink computer filled with games for a 6-year-old.


Richard procurred the funniest gift as he tracked down a sweatshirt from Sonic that I wanted from 3 years ago. This cute design had to be hard to find, even with our Sonic connections! It has a snowman drinking a cherry-limeade and its snow body is being filled up. It is so cute! He also gave me a new camera.

Richard loved the coupon book I gave him for date nights, movie selections, and some gift cards for one of his favorite restaurants. His love language is quality time so although shopping for him is difficult loving him is not!

I love our family!

Christmas Wednesday - before lunch

Lauren had a special appointment with my friend Sherrie for a new hair style! This was a treat and we didn't let anyone else know where we were going! After the cut we went to get her ears pierced. Lauren was a little nervous, but after the shock of having it done she had a rough time.



I love a girl who can laugh at herself. We staged this picture at home, but it was a reenactment of the mornings events.

Christmas Monday

We decided to spread our Christmas celebrating throughout the entire week of Christmas. This turned out to be really good for us as we got to make memories all week.


On Monday night we had a big breakfast dinner (my favorite!) and then we took the kids caroling. Little did they know that we had hidden the kids' first present in the garage of one of the families we were visiting!



We hope this ping pong table will bring many kids into our garage for lots of fun over the years!

Christmas Tuesday

We had a special night planned on Tuesday! We took our wonderful neighbors to a Razorback Basketball Game in Fayetteville!

The Norris' are such precious friends and have taken such good care of Ryan and our family over the years. We wanted to do something fun so we convoyed up to Fayetteville to cheer on the Hogs. The Hogs aren't on a very good run right now but we won in OVERTIME against Missouri State. It was fun to laugh and cheer for them with our friends.

We capped off the night driving through the Fayetteville square. It was gorgeous!

On the first day of Christmas break...

The girls are long overdue for a room makeover. It's time to put away our elementary posters and pictures and update! I had purchased the bedding a couple of months ago...but we hadn't decided to take on the entire project until after they got out of school. Emptying their room took over two hours and a couple of large trash bags. Hooray! All the items in their room were lining both hallways and part of the living room in laundry baskets.

What started out as a one room project spread! Their bunkbeds were assigned a new home in Sheridan's room, so that took a little adjusting and a lot of help from the boys. Everyone worked hard and by Saturday at noon we had the bunk system in S's room and primer on the girls' room.

By Sunday, I knew I was hosting Christmas Eve with Richard's family...so we started moving a little faster with the painting and re-organizing. Our goal was to get all the baskets out of the hall and the new furniture put together. We purchased two 8 box cubicals and two armoires. Lauren and I tackled these projects with the power tools and with a little help got them up and filled.

We all love the bedding and colors! We will have to wait on new white beds for awhile and are trying to decide if we want captain's style with shelves at the head or drawers underneath for storage. I've also painted their desk turquoise blue but it is too cold to finish right now so their computer is on the floor along with the unsorted baskets. We'll tackle it again next week.