The little white tree that saved the day

Once upon a time, Courtney was supposed to be in her new house before Christmas.  Because she had been told this many, many times by the people at her lender's office, she was reassured by the knowledge.

She proceeded to pack Christmas.

Her tree (nope, there was no tree up in the Merrill household all through December), her decorations, all of the many gifts and holiday party supplies.

Everything.

Also, on the morning that they were supposed to close on their new home, Courtney had her children take all of their clothes out of their closet and dresser drawers and pack them all into giant garbage sacks (the choice of professional movers).

The kitchen closely resembled Old Mother Hubbard's, the rooms were pretty much empty, the garage was full of boxes.

Orrin and Courtney signed the papers.

Everything was perfectly perfect.

But, alas, people are dumb and the loan didn't fund that day.

That day happened to be a Friday.  Titles company are not open on weekends.  And Orrin happened to have taken the entire weekend off to move us.

So we had to wait until Monday to get the keys to our house.

And Orrin has to work through Friday.

We didn't get the house in time for Christmas. 

You cannot even begin to imagine the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth that went on in this family (by me).

Orrin let me cry and throw my fit.  Then he said, "Why don't we set up the Christmas tree?"

He is ever-so-wise.

So we spent our night setting up our new itty-bitty white tree while watching It's A Wonderful Life.  You cannot feel bad for yourself while watching Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed live in Bedford Falls.  An impossibility!

Staring at those softly glowing lights, I realized that it just didn't matter.  We will get the house.  Everything will not play out the way I had planned (does it ever?).  But it will play out.  The kids do not care if Christmas is here or there, as long as it is Christmas.  And everything will be ok. 

In the morning, Wy-fi placed the star upon the highest bough (his turn!).

And he did an awesome job.

He was rather impressed.

So, this sparkling little tree saved me from a weekend full of self pity.

Thank you, my little white tree.

The cards

Prepare yourself for a shock.

Ready?

I did not design my own Christmas Cards this year.

GASP!

Thanks to pure laziness and a tantalizing offer from Card Store (39 cents each for a folded 5x7 card?  Plus free shipping?  And you put my return address on there?  SOLD!), I ordered pre-designed cards. 

I know, right?

It didn't help that I fell in love with the first card I saw on their site.

 And I could add another picture on the inside of the card. 

It's all just too good to be true!

Also, when the cards were delivered, they came in a fancy little box full of confetti.  It was like opening a box of pure happiness.

Getting these babies ready to mail was a family event.  I used the old home printer to add the addresses (a service which Card Store offers for free, but I didn't want to spend the entire night typing 50 addresses on the internet... instead I spent two days doing it on Word).  Adi and Porter helped with the stuffing and sealing.  I sat back and took crummy pictures of them on my iPhone because I was too lazy to get my camera.

Ready to be sent off.

And no, we didn't get Christmas stamps.  Have you seen the line at the post office?  I just bought these one from the checkout at Walmart!

And... here they are (if you weren't oh-so-lucky enough to get one yourself).

They open!  They really open!

See that space between the message and our names?  That's a spot for writing personal messages.

 I did not write a single one.

Tis the season!

Christmas Reads

And here it is.  Our annual Christmas book reading pic.  For as long as I've had this blog, I've been doing this.

That's right, people.  Pre-Pinterest.  An actual original idea.

Boo-ya.

Just so we can watch the progression of years, here's the previous pictures:

2007

2008

2009

 (2010 was another move right before Christmas, plus I was super preggers with Wyatt.  Apparently I didn't take a reading picture... so sad!) 

2011

If there's one thing that you can tell from these pictures, it's that I have a tendency of over-editing :)

This year I, once again, wrapped up 24 of our most favorite Christmas books (we do have more than that- I am a book-buying addict).  Every night, one of the kiddos gets to choose which one they wish to open and we read it together.  I totally stole this idea from my most favorite blog ever.

Except for Wyatt.  We tried to let him open a book, which he did rather expertly.  The problem came when he expected to keep the book for his own tearing purposes.  So we've been waiting until Wy-Fi goes to bed before we read.

Here's an almost-complete list of the books we have (and some I want to get).

Without further ado...

Drum roll please...

Christmas Reading 2012

Anti-climactic?  Most certainly.

But ain't they cute in their fuzzy jammies?

Every Morning in December

See this little chain, pinned to our bare walls?

This is our humble little scripture advent.  I made it in five minutes.  I know: I may very well be a crafting genious.

Every morning, one of the kiddos gently tears off that day's chain (and by gently I do mean with force enough to pull the entire chain off of the wall).

We gather around in our family room with our scriptures...

The girls are collecting the links, which means nearly every morning there is a scream-war over who gets that day's.  Porter finally resolved it by tearing one into two, and now that has become part of the routine.

Porter has officially lost three sets of the cheap scriptures, so he has to set on mommy's lap and share hers...

I may or may not have forgotten the specific location of my own scriptures, so I just use my phone.

Yeah, he gets his good looks and misplacing abilities from his madre.  There are worse things.

Whomever took off the link gets to read the scripture and ask the question (of course, I have to whisper-read Porter's to him).

And everyone raises their hand to answer, even if they hadn't even listened to the question *cough* Porter *cough*.

All while Wy-Fi runs around, using the scripture slip as a mustache. 

That kid may be a bit out of control.

Now, as some may know, we've had this daily reading in December tradition for a long time (2009, 2008, 2007- apparently I haven't taken pictures of this in the last couple of years) .  Almost every year I've found a new set of scripture references to share, none have suited me.

This year I came across this list from some random google search.  Unfortunately, I did not save the link to it, for which do I apologize.  This is by far my most favorite one of all.  These scriptures really focus on Christ's birth and the questions and songs help to reiterate to the kiddos what they had just read.  Love it.

I did whip up this list so that I can pull it up on the blog every year without fear of adding it to the pile of long-lost-items-misplaced-by-Courtney.

It's a big pile.  I think.

Next year I believe that I will go back to our usual adding an ornament to a mini tree tradition, but the chain thing is kinda fun.  Maybe I'll hold a family vote to decide...

Pancakes with Santa

Saturday mornings are near sacred for me.  They are a day where I can stay up as late as I want the night before, since I will be spending my morning lounging on the couch and doing absolutely nothing but watching Curious George and Jessie with the kiddos.

Fabulous, right?

It it pretty stinking awesome, actually.

But then Adi felt as though she should help out at her school's Pancakes with Santa, since she is a Student Officer.

Did I mention that she signed up for the eight o'clock shift?  Waaaaah!!

But now, I am glad Adi made her mother get off her lazy-weekend-morning butt and take everyone to it (plus my Marshall cousins, Ryan and Savannah).

Also: now I don't have to drive all the way to Bass Pro Shop to get their free pictures with Santa.

The instigator (she wasn't sure where she was supposed to go to do her job).

She found it!

There was butcher paper pulled across the tables with crayons out for the kiddos to color.  Pure brilliance, I tell you!

Some colored, some sat, some ran, and some chased (and some took pictures).

And, oh the food!  Usually the food at these sorts of things would be considered sub-par at best.  But this time, this time, they did it right.  There were the pancakes, of course, but there was bread and muffins from Paradise Bakery, donuts of the Duncan type, and even cookies.

And then there was Santa.

And the photo booth. 

And.... then we went home :)

Cocoa with Friends

Last night, Porter packed his little backpack and went with Nana and Papa on a grand sleepover adventure, leaving us girls (and their BFFLs) and Wy-Fi at home.

So after Wyatt was safely tucked into bed (three times in row), the girlies demanded a hot chocolate bar.  Unfortunately for them, 90% of my kitchen is packed and ready to be moved to the new casa, so they got these instead:

A mug of hot chocolate with a peppermint cookie on top (made from Pillsbury refrigerated dough, thank you very much).

I tried.

Luckily, these girls really didn't need anything fancy to be able to enjoy themselves.

 Thank heavens for good friends and good chocolate!

2 ladies dancing

Dance.

We breath and exhale it around this house.

Three nights out of the week are planned around it.

And when certain little girls aren't attending their lessons, they are subjecting treating the rest of us to a play-by-play reenactment of their classes.

So, I was happy to be invited to watch each of the girls at their actual lesson on the day of their little holiday dance parties.

First of all, Adi is tiny.

 But extra flexible!

Look at her!  She's all: It ain't no thang.

Seriously: it's disgusting.

She also has a little bit of attitude.

And she loved having me there to photograph her every move.

Lucky little Pipes has her bestest friend in her class.

And is pretty darn flexible herself.

She really kicks butt in her across-the-floor moves.

She's currently working on perfecting a one-handed cartwheel for solo in the Christmas dance.

That darn hand keeps coming down on it's own.

Yeah for BFFLs!

Pipes is really enjoying a chocolate cupcake there.

Also: Pip's Christmas dance is to this song of Justin Beiber's (her dance starts at :45).  I am sad to say I actually like the song.