Visitors!

We have the kind of house where you never know when the doorbell will ring or who will be ringing it. Well, in #2 house we don't ever get visitors. Well, I take that back, the Jehovah's Wittnesses have found us and stopped. But other than that our visitors are few and far between. So, imagine our excitement when two of my girlfriends from "down south" as we now call it, decided to bring their kiddos and stay a few days with us after Christmas. Picture 3 women, 7 kids and one husband, mine, who earned the Bestest Hubby Award. We had so much fun! The kids did their thing and us girls watched movies and chatted, just like we are supposed to. Oh, and we ate way too much. The first evening we were all here, I decided to make a fire in the wood stove, which apparently did not want a fire in itself. Smoke came billowing out of the back of the stove! It had never happened before and of course it had to happen while we had company! After the smoke cleared and everyone was done gagging and coughing, we did laugh, eventually. The big hit was Wii Resort and Just Dance. You should have seen those kids working up a sweat dancing, whether they were holding a remote or not! I think "Eye of the Tiger" was the fav, so funny, they call it an old song, very sad since I remember that being the "it" song. We got a huge snow storm the day after we got here and the kids had a blast playing out in it. I swear, it took us longer to get them bundled than they actually played outside. But hot chocolate always tastes good no matter how long, or short, that you are outside. They played Vampire, which means all the lights are off and the person who is it, jumps out and scares you at random intervals. The screams made are so much fun to hear because they are all followed by giggles. Good times!

Christmas

We read "Jotham's Journey" this advent season. If you haven't read those books, you need to. Age makes no difference, hubby and I enjoyed these as much as the girls did. To answer the question we get a lot, yes, we have two trees. Since we have been back and forth between our two houses every weekend and will be south for Christmas day, we needed two trees! Ariel said, Mom, since we have two houses, does that mean we are rich? My answer was a very loud laugh! So, Christmas. We got a real tree for the new house, #2 house Belle calls it. The girls and I made decorations for the tree up here. We found decorations in the Gooseberry Patch Christmas Book and fell in love with it. Of course I think, that won't be too bad, but after you cut out 40 ornaments, which have two sides each, and then have to sew them together, stuffing them is the last think I really want to do. Ariel says...I'll stuff them, mom! And what a great job she did!! After we finished I was so glad that she encouraged me to do that, what a good helper she is turning out to be! We decorated the mantle, so fun, and hung stockings on the railing to the stairs. Of course this impeded sliding down the banister, so I'm sure they will be the first thing to come down. The gingerbread house! We had so much fun doing that too. Of course, I think we were on a sugar high for a couple days after making that, you have to sample all the good stuff. Christmas is always such a fun time of year and with two houses to enjoy it in, this will be a Christmas we won't soon forget. Celebrating our Savior's birth is so fun!

Christmas Pagents

The girls got to be in their school play and in the Sunday School Christmas pageant. In the school play, Ariel was a king and had a solo! She did awesome. Belle was an angel and her big line was, "Let's talk about joy!". In the Sunday School pageant, Belle got to be Mary! It was so fun! Ariel once again used her beautiful singing voice to celebrate Jesus' birth!