Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Preparing For Christmas

We have pulled a few Christmas things out and baked a little and even read our first Christmas book. We read The Twenty-four Days Before Christmas by Madeleine L'Engle first since we start our own 24 day countdown on Friday. It's a great book and got us in the mood to start thinking of things we can do each day. Then today we started The Christmas Doll by Elvira Woodruff. We really like this book about two sisters that only have each other. A deadly fever sweeps through the workhouse where the two girls live and they flee for their lives and end up on the streets of London in the freezing cold. It really keeps the attention of my kids and though they have heard it numerous times they still want to hear it again. 



























































Sunday, November 26, 2017

Starting The Christmas Season

We have been doing a few things here and there for Christmas for the past couple of weeks, but now I feel like we are really in the Christmas season. We got our tree on the Saturday after Thanksgiving like we have done for as long as I can remember and we have even put up a couple of small trees. Piper and Tess are about as excited as you can be and asking the same questions about Christmas over and over and over. Piper has no recollection of Christmas at all in China which I find strange as she was six months from her 8th birthday when she came home to us. Tess, on the other hand, remembers a little and said they had no gifts but they did get candy. They both talk non-stop about Christmas. 

This week we will probably pull out a few Christmas books -- though we have actually already read one. We will decorate a little and then on the 1st of December we will start our Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas where we do something every single day leading up to Christmas. The something we do can be as small as putting candles in the windows or making cookies or even just putting a wreath on our front door. But, we will do some small thing every single day. All the kids loved doing this last year so we will repeat again this year. 

Getting our Christmas tree -- we all met at the lot. 






























Katie and Ben.




























Joey and his family. I was so happy that Joey felt good enough to meet us and was actually able to eat.


















































Doing a little decorating at home. Well, Luke only watched. 





























Friday, November 24, 2017

Thanksgiving

It's so late I don't think I will post anything about Thanksgiving except to say that we had a very nice day with family and friends -- 49 of us together to be exact. I will just post some of the pictues from our day. I am very thankful for this time we all had together. 






























































































Monday, November 20, 2017

Operation Christmas Child

Today we packed our shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child and found a drop off place and took them there. It was hard to get everything into the boxes, but we somehow managed to get everything packed and the tops actually closed. I meant to take a picture, but forgot -- probably because today was the last drop off day and we were rushed. So, I will post a picture I took of my grandson, Luke, who is gearing up for Christmas -- even though his parents keep telling me it's too early.

It wasn't too early for me to take this picture of him.