Christmas Time!

My birthday was last week. I have now reached the ripe old age of 28. In some ways I feel jaded enough to be 48. But in other ways I still don't feel any older than 18 (was that really 10 years ago? Wow. I met Anthony when I was 18. Crazy!). Anyway, Anthony came home from work with these beauties on my birthday.....

Anthony is a smart man. It was such a pity, though, that Abby was so sick and congested that she could barely eat anything at the time. I couldn't share my unbelievably delicious cupcakes with her. And if she couldn't have any, then Spencer definitely wasn't going to get any. So poor Anthony and I had to eat these all by ourselves.......What a shame!

 

And here is reason #547 why I LOVE Abby's school teacher. Abby was sick and missed the last day of school before winter break. Miss Suzanne called me that afternoon and said that if I had a chance to stop by, I could pick up the Christmas present that Abby made for us. So I did. Then she called the next day and said she was headed in our direction and asked if she could drop something off for Abby. She made a book about all the things that Abby likes to do at school, and thought Abby might enjoy looking at it over vacation. So awesome! We all love to read it, so I thought I would share it with you. Thank you Miss Suzanne!

So cool, right?

 

And now, on to Christmas.

 

Some friends of ours invited us into their Christmas Tree Challenge this year. They gave us a tree-shaped pan with instructions to bake something in it, then post a picture of it on Facebook. The picture that received the most "likes" by midnight on 12/21 would win a Major Award. We didn't win, but I had fun making our clever creation. Buddy, our Elf on the Shelf, just couldn't help himself....

 

This was our year to go to San Diego to be with my family for Christmas. But neither of my siblings were able to be there, so I convinced my parents to come to us so that we wouldn't have to travel. Fabulous, right? Yes. So they came and stayed with us for a few days. Unfortunately both Abby and Spencer were sick the entire time. But that didn't seem to diminish their excitement for presents on Christmas morning. One of the first things Spencer did was check the plate of cookies that we left for Santa.

Abby made her way to the presents while no one was looking. We were getting breakfast ready and then noticed that she was poking around at all of the colorful packages that had appeared under the tree. I remember two years ago, she actually started unwrapping the presents while we were in the kitchen. She was Spencer's age that year.

 

Check out Abby pushing her new shopping cart.

 

I realized a few weeks ago that I didn't take pictures of Christmas last year. Maybe it was because I didn't have enough hands. Or maybe (and most likely) it was because it just was not a happy time for me. But I am happy to report that the story this year is much better. I just don't care anymore that things are different. I think I am finally getting the hang of dancing in the rain.