Our Family Christmas

 Due to holiday travel plans, we had our family Christmas on December 20th, which was also our 15th wedding anniversary: double the celebrating! We loved the freedom of choosing our own day to celebrate Christmas, and we loved having Christmas early. We have tried different ways to celebrate Christmas in the past, but we've never simply moved the date and kept everything else the same like we did this year. It was awesome! No calendar will control us! Haha. The kids started calling it "Fake Christmas," but that sounded bad so I told them to call it "our family Christmas" instead, and thankfully the name caught on quickly. 

Sunday December 19th, was officially our family Christmas Eve. After enjoying the lovely inspiring Christmas music program at church, we began our own family Christmas Eve celebrations. It was the perfect follow-up after a festive spiritual Christmas-y church service.

White Stuff

White stuff from our week: gift wrapping, snow, braces, school, cookies, church, and a little more snow.

Monday, December 13th: I wrapped the first four gifts of the season today! Let's just say I'm out of practice, and I was never a very good wrapper to begin with. The struggle is real.

Tuesday, December 14th: Jay got braces today! They are only on his top teeth so far; he will get brackets on the bottom teeth next month. Signing the paperwork for braces was like getting a mortgage! Jay and I both had to initial next to practically every sentence on multiple pages.

The Couch

We got a new couch last week! It was time. It had been time for years. Our former couch was ten years old and so dead. The springs in the cushions were all sprung and wonky from years of performing double duty as a trampoline. It was a budget Costco couch floor model, so it had already seen plenty of wear before we even bought it back when Rose was a baby. There were only one and a half semi-comfortable seats on the entire couch, and they were always hotly contested before family movie nights. Everyone else just had to sit on the floor, sit on the old Ikea chair, or sit on the pointy springs till their gluteus muscles either rebelled or fell asleep. 

November Books

I read 14 books in November. 

Amber, Jay, and Rose

 Ah, motherhood. The refiner's fire of refiner's fires. I started this as a simple post to share a few of Amber's recent antics, but then it morphed into other introspective motherly musings. That's what I love about writing-- I start with one idea and then my fingers take it from there and tell me what's really on my mind. To quote Flannery O'Connor, "I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say." Classic introvert communication style and thought processing! Anyways, first up are five of Amber's latest antics, followed by some things I love about my kids and the journey of motherhood.

The 7-hour Christmas Tree and the 25 minute Parade

Per family tradition, we headed west to the mountains to find our Christmas tree on the day after Thanksgiving. It was an 80 minute drive to our favorite tree finding spot in the central Cascades just east of White Pass. Our friends the Kannely family joined us again this year, which is always fun. We hiked about a half mile up a forest service road before striking out into the forest to find the perfect mountain Christmas tree.  It wasn't very cold or snowy this year, so our hike was quick and quite easy compared to scrambling through deep snow like we've done in the past. We didn't even bring our sled.