Holiday Buzz....

The upcoming Christmas celebration has our house buzzing!  The kids are so excited. We are so excited!  BUT the volume is unbelievable!  Ed's parents gives us money each year to buy the kids gifts from them.  My parents do most of their own shopping, but I help with part of it, especially for ones like Jon and Hannah.  Then I shop from us.  As the piles of presents grow so does the curiosity of the kids.  However, they have all done well to leave the presents alone, except for one....Baby Nate!  He can reach one stack in our bedroom and as soon as I put him on the floor (no matter where) he crawls as fast as he can for our room and that stack of presents. 

I'm behind on getting Christmas cards out due to a Mr. Workman turning off the power during an update and corrupting the file with our Christmas DVD.  Hopefully, by the end of this week, Christmas cards and DVDs will be in the mail.  It has been stressful making a whole year's worth of video in a couple weeks.  Everyone will just have to be understanding that this year's DVD will not be the usual style or quality, but there will be a DVD!

This week we will also start the beginning of making Christmas goodies.  The kids are all excited, especially Corrine and David who are my two main kitchen helpers.  We have our groceries and they are ready to mix, bake, and most importantly TASTE all the treats.

This coming Sunday is the Christmas program and there is still many preparations to be made for it!  In fact, I'm a bit overwhelmed thinking about it since our kids made up a majority of the cast!

I've been looking for some elves to come help me and the older kids get the Christmas tree up this year.  So far I haven't found any elves, but hopefully yet this week.  Mr. Workman works every weekend until Christmas due to debate tournaments so he won't be able to help decorate until right before Christmas, and I hate to say, "Honey, now that your vacation is finally here, I've got a few thousand things for you to do..lets start with the tree."  We did agree that this year we would skip the outdoor decorating and some of the "not baby proof" upstairs decorations like the foyer tree and my snowmen collection.  But the upstairs ledge is lined with poinsettias as is the table (15 in all) and some of my favorite wall hangings are up so it definitely looks like Christmas.

"I heard the bells on Christmas Day;

their old familiar carols play,

and wild and sweet the word repeat

of peace on earth, good-will to men!"--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow