It's Beginning to Look Alot Like Christmas..Is Over

...and i'm just finally posting about it. well, you'll need to excuse me as i'm trying to recoup the almost four months of my life i lost with severe morning sickness. i managed to celebrate christmas in the proper time frame but my productivity is still back in late october. please forgive me.

but anyway, without further ado, i bring you...christmas 2009.

ok, it wasn't exactly christmas yet, but we began the month of december celebrating st. nicholas day at our town's winterfest. it is a great family event with food, live music, reindeer
and visits with ol' st. nick himself.
a few days before christmas we received a lovely snowfall of almost two feet. it played havoc with my mother trying to fly in here for her visit, but it made a lovely white christmas and even lovelier snow forts that took up the entire front yard.
we attended christmas eve mass where our oldest sang in the choir
and i actually finished sewing everybody's pajamas before 9pm...it's a record. which was especially good considering they all chose different patterns.
the children awoke christmas morning to find their presents snuggly nestled under "douglas" our fine evergreen friend this year.
and we opened the gifts in front of the crackling fire.
and then we celebrated the new year with a small group of good friends.
oh, and we did celebrate the epiphany after that, but the pictures turned out horribly for some reason. so, i won't entertain you with those. i'm sure you're bothered.

anyway, that's it in a nutshell. at least the cyber part of my life is sort of caught up now. not that it really matters but doing this is so much more enjoyable than cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and lesson planning. :)

What We've Been Up To

yep, it's the same old repetitive song and dance...it's been awhile. i have been trying to get "update blog" to fit in somewhere in my daily (or heck, even weekly) schedule but as you can see. it hasn't happened for some time. so, let's see. the last time you caught up with our family we were dressing up for halloween and celebrating all saints day. here's what we have been up to since then.

in early november we were treated for a few days to a visit from this not so little guy on our screen door.
if you remember, my son received a kit with a praying mantis cocoon in it for his birthday. about a bajillion teeny tiny praying mantises (or is that mantisi, mantiseye, who knows) hatched out of it and we had been seeing them periodically throughout the summer and fall while they grew, and grew and grew some more. well, that would lead us to believe that this visitor was probably one of them and we hope that there were some eggs laid somewhere around the yard somewhere when this critter went to the big mantis home in the sky as it got too cold for it.

then, towards the end of november we celebrated the fourth birthday of our youngest. it's hard to believe that she is four already. i made a dora birthday cake for her
which she seemed to enjoy thoroughly.

and the day after that we celebrated my husband's birthday. i'll spare him and won't post his age for the entire free world to see (or at least the six people who will read this). we gave him rock band for the wii.it has been a fun game to play with him. sometimes after the kids go to sleep we like to go downstairs and rock out for a bit. our world tour is going splendidly. thank you for asking. we will soon be coming to a city near you...i'm sure.

and just a couple of short days after that we celebrated thanksgiving with family (sorry, i just realized i don't have any pictures of the visiting family members), college friends that the kids love to use as a jungle gym
and this massive bird.if memory serves correctly, i believe he was a twenty two pounder. yep, we go all out.

so, that's about it. yes, i have stopped before talking about christmas but you know. i think that deserves a post all to itself. and if things go well, you won't have to wait until easter to read it. :)