Pictures and Holiday Tidbits

It's a new year! I keep thinking I will take the time to write some sort of end of the year/beginning of the year kind of post... highlights of the past year, recounting the decades in my life or something cool like that but it just doesn't happen. Instead of not doing anything at all, I thought I'd just throw together a bit of a picture post from the past few weeks of holidays and vacation from school.

We don't generally do gifts at Christmas, although often we end up doing a little something. This year my 11 year old had spent months collecting small gifts for each of us. She could hardly wait to give them to all of us and kept wondering when we would do it? To her surprise, I had also spent some time on a gift for each person and the Thursday night before Christmas week, we had the fun of sharing our presents.

All of my pictures of the evening are terrible quality but her joy in giving 

was the sweetest thing ever!

I had gotten the brainstorm at some point that family pjs would be fun and I spent way, way too much time looking at options online and trying to decide if I was crazy to try to make my ideas reality. You have to remember that my husband sometimes requires me to buy things, so just buying matching pjs was going to be more than my penny pinching self could handle.

I finally decided to order plain black t-shirts and scoured the internet for the best sales on black Friday, agonizing over prices and sizes until I so nearly chucked the whole idea. I still needed to figure out how I was going to write on the shirts if I ordered them, not to mention, I wasn't even sure what I wanted them to say! <Yes. Insert eye roll here. Enneagram 9, what can I say. >

Long story short, I ordered the shirts, bought some cheap stencils from Wal-Mart and some acrylic paint and some stuff to add to it to make fabric paint and found ideas for wording all with the help of good old Google (how did we live without Google?!).

I spent a crazy amount of

 time on them but surprising everyone

 was so much fun that the whole 

thing was completely worth it!

Friday was Chris's mom's birthday. Earlier in the week I decided at the last minute to try to get the family together to celebrate. We told her we'd like to take them out to eat and then I invited Chris's brothers to come meet us if it suited them. Ended up they all were able to come, so that was fun and she was quite surprised and pleased!

Some of the grandchildren

weren't there but

it was a fun evening. 

Early Sunday morning we left for Arkansas to spend Christmas with my family! Jasmine had a stomach bug Saturday evening and I had visions of everyone taking their turn on this trip and wished we could just stay home. We got to Arkansas in time to go to church Sunday evening and listen to my sister talk about her work in Belize. I was glad for the chance to say hi to friends. Early Monday morning I heard Isaac go flying down the stairs to the bathroom with Charles and my heart sank to my toes! He spent the day on the couch Monday but by evening he was fine and the rest of our time everyone stayed healthy, thank the Lord.

By late Monday night my whole family had arrived and we spent Tuesday and Wednesday enjoying family time and the lovely, sunny weather Arkansas was having.

Tuesday was a georgous day for a hike and the whole crew - from the 7 week old to the 80+ year old - enjoyed a trek up the mountain to an old fire tower! The view was lovely and we rigged up a bucket/ cement block 'tripod' to take a group picture.

Our time together wasn't that long but we packed it full with games and music and laughter and memories.

Oh, and food. Lots of good food. 

And pretty tables to eat it at.  

I have a sister who is the queen of sentimental, creative ideas. The jars on the table with fairy lights tucked inside all came from mom's canning shelves and we got to each choose one for our prize in a game of Bingo! So special. 

It was a good trip.

Oh, I must mention -- Chris got a great thrill out of surprising me with a large wrapped gift Christmas morning! I did guess what was inside when I lifted the box, since I had debated about buying a serger on black Friday. Can't wait to play with my new toy! I've never used one of these things before.

We traveled back home on Thursday to the grey dreariness of Ohio...... Was that complaining? 🙂 At least it wasn't freezing cold!

This week there's been no school, so we've had lots of relaxation along with a few projects and fun things. Sunday evening we invited family over for a snack and ended up with a few more people, which was fun.  The girls enjoyed arranging all the goodies.

New Year's Eve we were invited to Charles's classmate's house for a delicious supper and board games. It was a fun evening that lasted almost into the New Year, the clock struck 12 on our way home!

School starts again on Monday and, I must say, it's about time to get back to a schedule. If we went on like this too much longer we might completely forget how to be disciplined, productive people. In the silence that will bring, maybe I will have the chance to collect my thoughts into a 'cool' post of some kind. For now, I hope you enjoyed some pictures!

Happy New Year!