How We Do Christmas

One of the children recently had the journal topic, "Describe a family tradition you have."  He said, "I can't do this, we don't have any family traditions!"  Seriously?

So today I'd like to write about Christmas at our house.  I'll start with a tradition that we stole from an online friend.

Our nativity.  It's this one, Schleich Nativity.  I chose this one because they also sell individual animals to match.  Each year, we select an animal from the World Vision gift catalog and we make that donation.  Then we buy the same animal for our nativity set.  We can look at our nativity and know we helped families around the world by giving a donkey, a sheep, and chickens.  It's still a relatively new tradition for us, but I anticipate someday we'll have quite the farm represented.  (Fortunately there are sheep figures in different poses!)  

Our front room tree.  The kids and I finished it this morning, while listening to Christmas music.  

Everything from Alvin & The Chipmunks to Amy Grant.    

It's such fun to see the ornaments, like this one Hannah made at preschool last year.

Each child has a shoebox for their own special ornaments.

We often make ornaments together as a family craft at some point during the season.  

Picture ornaments are my favorite.

Even moreso when the pictures are hilarious.

This morning, I got to tell Hannah, "Look!  When Zachary was in kindergarten just like you, he made this ornament for me!"

After the ornaments, we made our annual "pretzel thingies."

Everybody loves pretzel thingies!

Take square pretzels, top with kisses or Rolos,

bake at 200* for a few minutes to soften the chocolate,

Then, while they're still hot, top the kisses with an M&M, and kinda squish them down a bit.  

Like this.

Top the Rolos with a pecan half and squash those down, too.  

Chill to set the chocolate.

These are wicked tasty.  Consider yourself warned.

What other things make our Christmas ours?  Some years we do a Jesse Tree.  I participated in an ornament swap for this years ago, so we have lovely handmade ornaments for ours.  What's a Jesse Tree?  Each day, you read a devotional together and then put up that day's ornament.  This year, the little tree we usually use for this has become our Around The World Tree instead.  Which is a little weird.  We've never had a homeschool Christmas tree before, but I like it.

We use mostly cloth gift bags for our Christmas wrap.  Back when I was obsessed with sewing instead of adoption (I can only really obsess about one thing at a time, lol!) I made a BUNCH of gift bags of various sizes out of Christmas fabric.  This was during the Lego Era, so some of them had to be pretty big to fit those impressive Lego boxes.  We've been using them ever since.  I go through less than 1 roll of Christmas wrapping paper per year.  In fact, I bought a roll from my baby sister's school fundraiser a couple years back... and I haven't even opened it yet.

If you're thinking, "Oh, wow, that would save a lot of money, I should do that too, but fabric is so expensive," wait until after Christmas.  Go to JoAnn's when all the Christmas prints are 75% off in January, and buy up a bunch then.  That way, you'll be all set for next year!  Oh, and I find that if you add a folded ribbon (twill tape or bias tape will even work in a pinch) to one of the seams, a few inches down from the top, it makes a perfect tie.

While we're on the subject of GIFTS, everyone gets 3.  Baby Jesus was given gifts from the wise men.  He received gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  If 3 gifts was good enough for God incarnate, it's good enough for us, right?

However, even though we don't do Santa, we DO do STOCKINGS!  Stockings are just fun!  Christmas morning, I get up and throw cinnamon rolls in the oven.  Then we pass out stockings.  Once everyone has had a chance to open their stockings, we all breakfast on cinnamon rolls and orange juice.

Christmas is such a family oriented holiday that we often don't see exactly how other families celebrate.  In fact, newlyweds are often surprised to discover that their beloved does/doesn't do some things that they assumed everyone did.  I love hearing about family traditions, whether holiday related or not.  It's always fun to get new ideas for things to do (whether once, or over and over) with our own family.  As moms, we are often the ones in chage of creating or maintaing traditions.  It's an awesome responsibility.

It's Only Romantic If You're Adopting

Paul took me to the police station this morning!

We're in the final stages of gathering up our dossier documents.

Our immigration fingerprint appointments are on 12/18.

Once we have immigration approval, I want us to be DTC (dossier to China) as quickly as possible.  And each piece of the dossier needs to be notarized, certified by the Secretary of State, and authenticated by the Chinese consulate in San Francisco before it goes.

Once we are DTC, we'll be at the half way point, and I can breathe a huge sigh of relief!

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The Unveiling!

Shout it from the roof-tops, WE HAVE PRE APPROVAL!  

I'm going to share one picture per week.  Hopefully, we'll get updated pictures a little further into the process, but for now, I only have 8 pictures that I feel comfortable sharing, so this will get us through a couple months of the wait, at least.  

Here she is!

Wook at dat sad widdle face!  I'm so glad we have happy pictures, too.

I was able to connect with a woman who has volunteered at Katie's orphanage.  She generously looked through her pictures for any she might have of Katie, and sent me this one.  It was taken August 21, 2011, which would make her 11 months old.  It's the earliest picture we have of her so far.

The most recent picture we have appears to have been taken in June or later.  Most of the pictures are from May, and her hair is significantly longer in the other one.

I'm so excited to finally be able to share her sweet face with everyone.  I'll share another picture next week!  Squee!

Faux Gingerbread Houses

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!  

Today was gingerbread house day.

We have an annual tradition of making these.  

It starts off all nice and orderly.

Making houses or nativities.

This was Eli's.

Sam's

Jack's

This was the first year Hannah was able to really get into it.

And she enjoyed it, even though hers collapsed.

The roof of my stable.

Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus, and the inn keeper's wife.

Seriously, who do you think delivered the baby??

The whole gang!

Ese gettin' messy.

Eli added a vehicle out back.

Josiah helped Hannah reconstruct hers after the collapse killed both their original structures.  

Hannah's is on the left, Josiah's is on the right.  

Homeschoolers much?  

Flag of Mexico.

Bri later made a Canadian flag.

Some pictures need no words.

Adorable is bears wearing scarves.

This is Annaliese's.

What could go wrong here??

Yup.  Burnt fingers.

Crushed house, crushed girlie.

But out of the ashes arose a new structure.

And frosting in the hair.

If you look closely, you'll see a bear skiing down the mountain behind the tree.

Now I'm going to park them in front of a holiday movie and let them be sugary zombies for a bit.

So what else is going on?

The weekly wrap up posts are great if you're into homeschooling, but there are other things going on in our life.

My beloved printer, who has seen me through 3 homestudies and years of homeschooling has died.

I may or may not have whistled Taps as it was carried away by pallbearers.  

I've commandeered Paul's printer, but it's just not the same.

The kids decorated for Christmas.

Mostly themselves, lol, but also a couple of trees.  

Trees?  Plural?  Yes.  

Years ago, when times were lean, we were gifted a small tree by friends.

That tree is currently our Around The World tree in the school room.

When we moved into our old house, we discovered two trees up in the attic.  

One of those is in the great room.

And when our dear friends moved away, they left us their BIG tree, which is in our front room. 

Annaliese is excited about getting her own apartment after graduation, so I'm thinking on of our middle trees will go with her. 

Paul deserves major props for this.

He was sick, but I still dragged him our to notarize an important piece of adoption paperwork.

That's love.

Speaking of adoption, I was doing some Christmas shopping, and I splurged and bought myself an ornament.  I didn't have to do a Christmas staring at Hannah's picture, since we saw her face in January and got her in November.  

I also got us signed up to receive donations at http://adopttogether.org/grtlyblesd/

Anything given through that link is tax-deductible.

And all is quiet on the Safe Families front.  

Hannah and Sparkle had matching shirts that said "I love Sparkle."

I had Hannah wear hers the other day for the first time since Sparkle and Fluffy left, and it made me miss them.  Those first few days after they leave, when their clothes still pop up in the laundry are bittersweet.  

I got another phone call this week from Sassy Girl's school.

We've received truancy notices in the mail for both her and Mr Jingle Pants.

Breaks my heart that they're still not in school.

Speaking of school, last night was Josiah's choir concert.

He looked awesome, but was not in a picture mood.

While they were dressed up for the performance, I took a picture.

These outfits have been in the family for a LONG time!

I lost most of our family pictures in a computer crash, but I was able to find a couple "ghost of Christmas past" shots to illustrate how long I've been forcing encouraging the children to wear these.

That's Josiah and Samuel.  They're now 15 and 14.

And this little fluffster in an egg nog stupor is Eli.

Who is 11 now.

Where does the time go?

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