Christmas 2010

Some fireworks are legal now. Yay!

Christmas Day

The kids with Grandma & Papa and 2 cousins.

Joshua with Santa gifts.

Hannah with her Santa gifts.



I meant to post on Christmas to tell everyone Merry Christmas and to have a wonderful day celebrating our Savior's birth. I really did mean to but obviously I didn't get around to it. We opened one gift on Christmas Eve like we usually do. Hannah opened her gift from Joshua which was a $25 gift card to Harkins so we could all see Narnia:Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It was very sweet of Joshua to use his own money to buy her that. Joshua opened a present from Hannah that she "bought" at Bible Study. It was a Steelers football. I opened the Prince of Persia DVD and Todd opened the kids' gift to him. It was the Veggie Tales Meaningful Life DVD. Knowing how much he likes It's a Wonderful Life the kids went in on buying that for him which we watched that night.

Christmas morning we got up and sang Happy birthday to Jesus and ate our traditional breakfast of birthday cake. We surprised Todd this year by buying a store bought cake instead of making one at home. I prefer homemade & he prefers store bought. He got his way this year. Then we opened presents and went to my sister's house for dinner. We opened more presents there and came home to play some of the games Hannah got as gifts. She's really into family game times and there's a couple we haven't played yet. Altogether they got for Christmas: Buzz Lightyear operation,Clue,Apples to Apples,Cranium Jr.,Disney Pictureka,Blokus, and a newer version of Connect Four.

Sunday we went to see the movie with Hannah's gift card. I really wish so much had not been changed from the book and that they didn't go out of order with some things. Good movie if you've never read the book:) I wish I didn't like the books so much so I wasn't disappointed with the movies. I don't hate them, I'm just let down a bit. Later that night Todd lit some sparklers for the kids. We played Blokus before Todd went to bed.

I have a big "Thank You" to give to our secret Santa this year. This year has been another tough one financially. Each year since Todd's layoff has gotten progressively worse and it's finally catching up to us. We were prepared to tell Joshua that Santa is really us because there was not going to be a pile of Santa gifts for either of them this year. They are understanding kids and not hung up on expensive gifts so I knew they'd be okay. They understand when we say we don't have the money for something. God knows our situation though. Even though the kids don't "need" the presents and they are just "wants", God saw to it to bless us through generous strangers. We received a gift card to Walmart to buy them presents. The pictures are above. Thank you "Santa" for being so kind to my family. We hope that some day in the (very)near future that we can bless someone else the way you have blessed us:)