The Beginning of the End

It's inevitable that by the time Christmas, birthdays and our anniversary are over, I'm too overwhelmed to even want to start blogging about it. Hopefully I can catch up today.

Christmas

Grandma Dorothy came for 2 weeks at Christmastime giving our family something to look forward to. We've been feeling the absence of family more strongly in South Carolina than we did in Illinois, so we look forward to all the visitors we can get! Nadia took to Grandma like a fish to water. This girl doesn't need much warm up time with extended family.


Nadia learned several Christmas songs, her favorite being, of course, Jingle Bells. She's got the Batman version memorized, but often we hear a mixture of different lyrics.



We were very blessed this Christmas!






We had to wake Nadia up so that we could be at church on time. So she was a little grumpy at first.


Thank you to Walches





(When Steve opened your present, we didn't realize until later that mine was with it. I'm MUCH more appreciative of Mindy Gledhill than he is! :) I also got a great book with your gift card- Thank you!)

Thank you to Grandma and Grandpa Luke



Thank you for the funds to get a wheat grinder and new athletic shoes!! (Sadly this is the best picture of me I could bear to post) We're super excited about it!



Thank you to Chandra!!! (I accidentally forgot to wrap these on Christmas and later remembered they were tucked away in the closet. My bad. The kids were more than happy to have belated gifts though!) We love the books- I'm a big fan of all America's Test Kitchen's cookbooks and Steve really likes Mark Steyn's work.




Everyday while Grandma Dorothy here was like Christmas Day. Fortunately, we were able to discourage her from buying things that wouldn't fit in the house and she was able to restrain spoiling the kids too much. Nadia got a beautiful robot kitty (she's still disappointed that she didn't get a real one- poor kid. Rowan got a remote control helicopter that I think Steve likes as much as he does.



Mom also made me a bunch of maternity skirts and a dress along with treating me to a nice haircut. One day I hope to be as talented as her at whipping these things up! She also gave Steve some speakers for his laptop. Thanks Mom!!

The kids got Nintendo DS players from us with a slew of games. Total score at a garage sale- they were selling a boy player with Lego Games (Rowan said "Lego Harry Potter? Daddy, what were you thinking?!?" Steve's never been more proud. I'm sure one day he'll find that Harry Potter isn't as bad as Steve makes him out to be) and a girl player with Build-a-Bear and Dora games. It could not have been more perfect.



Apparently we've become gamers in this house, because I caved and gave Steve (and Rowan who is also obsessed with the game) Minecraft. Steve gave me some Nancy Drew PC games (don't knock it till you try it). We're all doomed.

Nadia burnt out on opening gifts in the morning, so we waited until after church to open the rest. We should all have such trials.


I stayed up until 1am making cinnamon rolls for the next day and working with Steve to get everything together. Not doing that again! But the rolls were delicious.




We finished the evening with a fantastic dinner. I got too tired to make "figgy pudding", but overall I think we did well. Steve even called me the following day while mom and I were out and told me how good the leftovers were and how much he appreciated me for making it. Such a sweetheart.
Some of the evening's offerings...



Merry Christmas from us all! We hope you had as wonderful of a day as we did! (Rowan was super uncooperative for pictures- stinker!)