Christmas Memories

Every year I give the kids a special ornament.  This year I had a little trouble finding just the right ornament.  When I was out w/ my 7 year old today we popped into a Hallmark store and looked at the ornaments.  I was able to find four of them that fit for the four oldest.

 

For E.  She really enjoys The Chronicles of Narnia.  A. found this ornament today and thought it was perfect for E.

 

Lucy Through the Wardrobe

 

 

I have several Frosty Friends ornaments from when I was younger that my mother gave me.  Every year A. just loves to look at these so this year I got her this:

 

 

R. was a little tougher but this ornament caught my eye because I thought it looked a bit like her.  She doesn't agree, but maybe through the years it will become a dear ornament to her.

 

And for my precious S. who loves trucks and tractors so much, this is the ornament for him:

 

For all of my children's First Christmases I get a Precious Moments "Baby's First Christmas" ornament.  So, this is J's.

 

Here are the kids, minus baby Gill, w/ their new ornaments:

 

 

For the past several years we read a Christmas book every night.  Right now my Christmas books are buried in the garage behind some bookshelves we removed to redo a bedroom, I'll have to post pictures of that another time E. drew the pictures and E & A painted it.  It turned out really good.  The theme, of course, was fish!  We just haven't put the bookshelves back in, so I can't get to all of my Christmas decorations yet, including our holiday books.  But, typically a book or two is left out of the box when I put everything away so we did get to read this book tonight.  This was a present from Aunt Laura several years back and is still a favorite.  We are big Eric Carle fans and this book just makes me smile every time we read it and press the button.

 

 

The kids Christmas present arrived yesterday and we started putting it together today:

 

With 10 boxes weighing over 600 pounds, we are just at the beginning of assembly of our new swingset!  We didn't do too bad.  We got both towers assembled today before the sun set.  Tomorrow we'll see how much further we get!