I think we are ready

I think that we are officially ready for Christmas. I have shopped, made cookies and buckeyes, made all the homemade presents I am going to make and decorated the house. The only thing I have not done is wrap the presents, which will be a good opportunity to make sure that I have everything. I have so many bags hidden all around the house that I have not gone back through them to make sure I have everything. I actually feel pretty relaxed and excited for the next coming days. My mom is coming into town today and staying with my brother for a few days, then my sister and then she will be staying at our house the last part of her visit. It will be nice to catch up and to visit with her and the rest of my family.

My neighbor is coming over tomorrow night to wrap presents. She said that she and her girlfriend used to do this every year together (I guess she now works full time and does not have time this year) to make it more festive so we are going to do it for the first time. It should be fun and I am looking forward to wrapping and having someone to do it with.

We had our good friends up from Knoxville with their two kids for a visit on Saturday. It was a bonus that we saw them last weekend in Knoxville but we did not get to see their oldest daughter since she was at grandma's. We had a great visit and I took a picture of their family and I think it turned out pretty nice.

They also took a photo of our family and if you forget what I look like here is our family.


We just got done decorating cookies this evening and they are very cute and creative. Mallory took her time and decorated every part of the cookie. Julianne had fun thinking of her own ideas and trying to decorate as many cookies as she could. Nathan had one cookie that he took a bite of at the beginning and it turned out to be his cookie that he decorated, ate, decorated, ate and continued this pattern until it was all gone. I actually took way to many pictures of him tonight but he was just too cute eating his cookie. Here are some of the pictures.









Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Dove candy wrapper saying: Your presence is often the best present (I love that quote, it is kind of how I try to live)
-fixing our electricity line (the screw that holds the electric line close to our house (it adds tension) was pulled from our house a couple of months ago so the line has been loose and I was worried that the weight from an ice storm would pull the line down and the lines would come out of our house) and our handy tall neighbor helping us (we could not have done it by ourselves).
-seeing the cookie decorating progression of our children through the years
-loving Nathan's persistent personality