Joe’s Birthday, Church, Christmas Eve

More catching up to do and there’s still loads to do after this post, too.  When will I find the time?  Somewhere, somehow, I hope.

Last Saturday we had Joseph’s birthday party.  My flash batteries were dead so I didn’t get many good pictures.  Here are a few from the evening:

I tried to get a family picture before church on Sunday.  It didn’t go too well.  The sweet older lady I asked to take our pictures couldn’t really figure out where to point.  She took 6 pictures.  This was by far the best:

Here’s one from when I was getting my settings right:

That afternoon I made 14 dozen cookies and we spent the evening delivering them to friends.

Monday was Christmas Eve!  When I was eating breakfast with Sadie that morning I told her that it was Christmas Eve day and that meant the next day would be Christmas.  She got very excited and said, “Oh I can’t wait to see snow on the ground in the morning!”  Cute little kiddo.  We spent the day shopping which wasn’t as bad as I expected, cleaning, wrapping, and cooking.

In the evening we had our traditional get together with all my mom’s family – aunts, uncles, and cousins.  It was so fun to see everyone and catch up on life.  Words could never do justice to how amazing the food was!  My mom, aunts, sister-in-laws, and sisters are phenomenal cooks.  Every year is a feast but this year was unbelievable!!  Bacon and chicken pastry puffs, my dad’s famous meatballs, cheese ball, bacon wrapped smokies,  ham, cheddar bay biscuits, pesto bread sticks, asiago breadsticks, swiss onion spirals, Italian antipasto squares, caprese style cherry tomatoes, ginger lime skirt steak, green bean casserole, fruit salad platter, potato casserole, etc.  I didn’t count how many types of cookies there were….I’m guessing 12+.  We really went overboard!!!  Oh deliciousness!  I forgot to take pictures of the food so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

I saw an idea on pinterest of covering ice cream cones with frosting and decorating them like Christmas trees.  The kids really seemed to enjoy it.  James just wanted to eat his cone, Ethan and Sadie were totally into it, Jax observed, Joseph smeared frosting all over his hands and giggled with happiness, and McKay was so wide-eyed and fascinated.





We also attempted to act out the Nativity scene with the kids but it was a major flop.  The only willing participant we had was Jax who dressed up in his cow outfit.  As I was getting him dressed I told him, “Now Jax, you’re a cow now so you can only moo – no more talking, ok?”  He is so obedient!  He happily and joyously mooed for the rest of the night.  As for the rest of the gang Mary was to be played by Maddy who was already asleep, Joseph was to be played by Joseph who didn’t want to wear his outfit, Ethan just wanted to be the official photographer instead of a wiseman, and Sadie thought she was Mary instead of her assigned role as an angel which was fine since Mary was asleep but she refused to hold Baby Jesus or dress up.  Oh well.  There’s always next year 🙂

On the drive home that evening we looked for Santa up in the sky.  Jax thought he saw Rudolf’s red nose 🙂  Sadie conked out pretty quickly, but the boys stayed awake the whole drive.  Jax helped put out cookies and carrots for Santa and his reindeer when we got home.  He’s so great!