First and foremost my friend Jennifer is home for Christmas. She is home. I am so glad that she will be home with her children. I continue to pray for her recovery but pray also with gratitude that she has come this far.
Second, Kjel's brother was laid off at work. It was stressful and I worried and prayed because there was nothing else to be done. This week we found out that he has a new job. The job will bring him to Chicago for training and Kjel is already making all kinds of plans to spend time with his brother. I think he should get a hotel in Chicago the week Erik is in town and the two of them can catch any minute Erik has when he isn't training or studying! Hooray and more prayers of gratitude.
Kjel gave me my Christmas present this year and I spent yesterday enjoying it. A friend of mine sent me a great e-mail about a white envelope on the Christmas tree and I was so happy I asked Kjel if we could change this Christmas and all to come. I now get the white envelope. It's wonderful and will fill our life with incredible memories. While I was out I needed to get gas in the van. This is what pulled up in the spot next to me.
The kids were blessed with a snow day on Friday. Super fun!! We wasted an extra day by making gingerbread houses and then shoveling and being grateful our neighbor rescued us with his snow blower. More prayers of gratitude. It was a terrific storm. Currently the wind is redistributing our piles of snow so we will be back out this morning shoveling.
We have a Christmas tree up. The two youngest decorated it. You can tell from the pictures about how tall they are. Anthony then came down and looked at it with disgust. He quickly spread the ornaments around and then stepped back and in pleasure looked at the work he had done. Unfortunately, the night of my Activity Day Girls Party, my dear sons decided to use the ornaments as bombs and spent the night upstairs sending the balls of joy down onto unsuspecting girls. The tree is now looking a little less joyful, however, I refuse to redistribute and I'm hoping Anthony will again find the tree disgraceful and work his magic to once again make it stand tall.
The kids have brightened my spirits with cute things they say and do. Nic brought home a paper from school. On it was the question if you could invite one person to school who would you choose? He said his mom. When asked why he wrote, because. He then wrote that he just loves me and would want me at school. I must say he won my heart over that day.
The next week though he had something different in mind. When he was asked to draw pictures of his family doing something special together each day of the week. He wrote in big letters, I have a miserable life. I spent some time giving him ideas of things our family does but he was insistent on sharing the truth. He took the paper back to school and I prepared for the counselor to call me. I started to get my alibi's in place and made sure I had enough family members on my team so as to present a strong case for the social worker. I must say this was all useless which was almost sad to me. The next day the paper came home with a remark from the teacher saying, I don't think so. I felt kind of sad because what if Nic did have a miserable life?? I guess I should just be glad that he does not.
Isaak is freaking out about Christmas. He wants a Hot Wheels track. He has many times mentioned that he is going to bring his money with us to the store and buy one. I have to keep telling him to wait to see what he gets for Christmas. Fortunately, I won't be dragging him through any more stores so we should make it just fine. I can't wait to watch him play with his track. He's going to be so excited.
We received lots of packages at our doorstep. Some we ordered, some just surprisingly showed up. It's been fun and only brought more anticipation and excitement to our Christmas.
I think that sums up our last few days. We're looking forward to Christmas and all the fun treats to eat and food to enjoy. We will be sleeping on Christmas Eve under the well decorated tree. I'll be waking the kids up and we'll be pulling Kjel out of bed as early as we can. We'll eat butterscotch pull aparts. We'll spread wrapping paper all over the house and eat way too much food. I'm looking forward to being together and just being. May you all have a wonderful Christmas, may something wonderful and unexpected be found by you and may you have loved ones close. WE love you and send our Christmas greetings!