Getting Ready for Christmas

Christmas is almost a week-long celebration for our family. We started celebrating Wednesday night with our Santa Shop for the children in Awanas at church. I manned the wrapping station for that and had a ball doing it! Thanks to Ms. Cindy for her help or I wouldn't have gotten finished! The children enjoyed using their Awana bucks to buy Christmas gifts for their loved ones! I think it is a great way to teach our children the spirit of giving. Then instead of our usual service Wednesday night, we had snacks/desserts in the fellowship hall for our Christmas party to celebrate the birth or our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Since our last day of school before Christmas was Wednesday, Drew, Mikayla, and I went shopping on Thursday. I had been working to make bracelets and necklaces for all the little girls in our families since October, and I needed a few more beads. We also took some pictures to Kinko's to have calendars made for the grandparents and great-grandparents. Thursday night we went over to Mimi and Poppi's house. Poppi thought Drew and Mikayla needed to practice opening gifts (yeah right!), so he let them each open 3 gifts.

Mikayla and Drew tear into one of their presents! My mom gets so mad because we all have a hard time patiently waiting until it's time to give gifts. Her famous words are "It's not Christmas (or birthday or whatever) yet"!

Mikayla shows off what she just opened, as Drew is still busy opening his. She sure is thankful for her panties...the girl loves clothes!

On Friday, my sister joined Drew, Mikayla, and I for more shopping. Since Craig had to work Friday I was going to take the opportunity to get his Christmas gifts. He surprised us, however, while we were at Walmart and almost saw some of his gifts. Drew and I managed to hide them, while he took MIkayla to shop with him. It wasn't long before he called me over to the jewelry counter to look at bracelets. He's given me 3 bracelets in the 7 years we've been together and I haven't managed to keep any of them. The first was a gold charm bracelet with charms that he gave me our first Christmas together. He ended up returning that one after I pulled it on something. The second was a gold X's and Os's bracelet that I broke after getting it caught on something. The third was a gold nugget bracelet that I lost. I don't have very much success with bracelets, so I was surprised that he wanted me to try on a few to see which ones I liked the best. We both picked one that we liked and he bought it right then and there. He put it on me right then, even with me protesting that he must wrap it and put it under the tree (those of you who know Craig know that he doesn't wrap presents - if it were left up to him all of our gifts would have been placed in bags)! It is a beautiful bracelet, and my goal is to keep it forever. I'll have to try to get a picture of it to post on here for all to see!

On Friday night we all went out to eat to celebrate my sister's birthday. Her birthday is Christmas Eve but fearing everything would close early on the 24th daddy decided to take us all out Friday night. Jennie picked The Flounder which was fine with me because I love that restaurant!! Mom, Dad, Jennie, Jonathan, Jess, Craig, Drew, Miki, and I all went to eat. We all had so much fun spending time together and eating out. Drew and Mikayla both had to sit beside their Poppi and Drew and Poppi played while waiting on their food. Mikayla was a little confused about not having cake. She said "this Jennie's birthday party, where's the cake?". We all got a good laugh about that. After dinner we all came back home. I had to finish some jewelry and wrapping for our get together at my Grandma's house Saturday night.