Monday we had 32 guests for Christmas and it was wonderful. But busy.  I just enjoyed the entire day and forgot to take a single picture! But the highlight of the day may well have been Darren’s sister’s kids playing a violin/cello duet of Oh Holy Night which was as beautiful a thing as you can imagine.  And at that moment the UPS man came with a Mary Kay delivery.  I hope he knew that gorgeous music was live!  You just don’t hear something like that every day.

Christmas morning I made sure to snap a few photos to remember things by.  This is our first Christmas in this house and the first Christmas Grant will remember–or not remember.  I can’t remember much from when I was 20 months old, come to think of it.

Our new tradition is to open up the sun room French doors where the children’s tree is.  They get their own tree to decorate with their precious hand made ornaments and whatever they want.  And I get my tree in the formal living room that is all silver and gold and as sparkly as I can make it.

We light the fire in the family room and the space heater in the sun room which looks like a fireplace too.

Stockings are first.  The kids don’t have to wait for us to open them, but they did. I’m glad.  As soon as I got up I slid the overnight breakfast casserole in the oven.  I made 2 small pans of it.  One with just sausage, egg, and cheese.  The other had green and red peppers and onions.  I was elated to find a southwest veggie blend in the frozen veggie department and all was on sale fro $.59 a lb.  Score!  No chopping veggies for this busy mama on Christmas.

The kids were so sweet together.  They each bought each other a gift–which made 30 items to open just from each other!  Then Darren and I bought them 3 things each.  Nothing was super huge and most of the children gifts came from Dollar Tree or Family Dollar on their black weekend 50% off sale.  But it took a lot of time to open everything.

Heidi helped Grant open his first gift which was a new rubber ball.  But after that Dub opened a remote control car which Grant wanted.

When we gave it back to Dub, he was NOT happy.

But unknown to us Grandma bought Grant the exact same remote control car which he was super excited to open later in the afternoon.

The best gift that I gave was a Dollar Tree dinosaur hat and a handmade dinosaur tail made from this tutorial.

Dub got one too.

But his favorite toy was a cardboard box.

Seriously we could all save a bunch of money and just give our kids big boxes and markers, lol.

Darren got a homemade bathrobe from me.  I bought the fabric for it 5 years ago and am just now getting it done, lol.  I also got him some beef jerky, special flavored coffee creamer (which he uses to flavor his workout shakes–we aren’t coffee drinkers.)  And a new pair of cuff links for his French shirts.

Darren didn’t get me a gift–his perfectionism got in his way of buying anything because nothing was just right.  But it made him a little miserable Christmas morning.  Thank goodness gift giving isn’t my love language.  I’m just as happy with a generous dose of praise.  But he promised me a shopping spree together which is way more fun anyway.

But I did get a gift from Jamberry nails–my new advertiser.  And I LOVE it!  Seriously ladies, you have to check these out. Click on the link to the right.

It just so happened that the day before I broke a nail below the quick–you know where it really hurts.  It didn’t break all the way across and I didn’t know what to do.  I couldn’t cut it that short and I couldn’t just leave it.  Then I remembered this package just waiting for a few minutes of fun.  The Jamberry nail decal smoothed right over the break making it strong and invisible.

We headed over to my  mom’s after morning packages and my nephew dog greeted us at the door.

Bwa ha ha ha!

My grandmother arrived about the same time we did.  And I noticed her festive nails right away.  So we took a picture together.

I’m so lucky to have Grandma still.  My kids have 2 great-grandma’s still with us!  And Grant especially loves them both.  He spent quite a bit of time playing a peek-a-boo with grandma through all the little sections in her walker.  And she enjoyed the attention too.

At some point the kids decided Grandpa would make a great dinosaur.  And they were right.

And my Aunt Christy told me about running a marathon 2 weeks ago for St Jude’s hospital in Memphis and made me cry.  She told me how at mile 23 the course went through the courtyard of the hospital and all the children were lined up along the side holding signs telling what their illness was and how long they had been there.  My Aunt is a beautiful woman but no spring chicken but she said to her friend, “There is no way we are walking this stretch.  Run now like you’ve never run before.”  And even though I wasn’t there I sat at her feet and cried.  And I held her finishing medal and cried some more.  And I told her I would consider running on her team next year–though getting away to Memphis the second week of December sounds like a hard thing right now.  And when I think how hard running the 5K was this fall–which is only 3 miles, running 26 sounds…well…crazy.  But I love St Jude’s and what they do for the children–and that makes me think that I really will try.

And then at some point we all giggled while Darren and Uncle Dave, both boyscout camping experts, struggled to put together a Doll tent. Which turned out super cute and has been played with a ton since.

And this is how I know the dino tails were a good idea.

This was my little dinosaur at the library today 🙂