All the things we've done - Part I

i got the sweetest gift for christmas. truly, the sweetest. my darling sister, kate, and my darling sister in law, lauren, compiled every bit of my blog archive into two large beautifully bound volumes. i've intended to do that for years, but always got overwhelmed by the task (4 years is a lot of blogging). they spent so much time on the project, each of them tackling two years of material! and they compiled it all so wonderfully. the gesture warmed me as much as the actual gift. i loved being able to flip through pages and pages of our family story and see the pictures and remember the cadence of our days. but the thing that touched me most deeply was just the realization of what they'd done for me. what they'd spent and sacrificed. all the time the headaches (poor lauren got all the content slurped up and mostly formatted and then lost it all and had to start over!) i felt so undeserving and so thankful. every time i see those books i want to be a more thoughtful, giving person. i could really gush on and on about this, but i'll move along to the relevant point, which is this: i am so glad i've kept this blog. my motivation has waxed and waned and shifted and changed, but thankfully, through the various stages of intent, it's remained a fairly consistent story of our family - the story i love most of all. and one i want to keep telling, probably forever. so...

we were so busy living all the wonderful moments of december, i didn't have much time for blogging. so i'm going to try to do a blitz of christmas catch up.

i helped with henry's class party just before winter break. we had such a fun time! his teacher started the day by dimming the classroom lights, setting all the chairs up in two rows like a train (she even had little battery-powered tea-light candles aside each row like floor lighting :) and she read the polar express to the children by the light of a conductor's lantern. she looked so cute in her conductor's hat...there could not have been a more enchanting way to start the party. the kids got to make candy trains, decorate christmas cookies and make a couple of holiday crafts. in the afternoon all of the first grade classes got to go to the gym for chocolate milk and a showing of the polar express. lucky, lucky!

lily got to come, too :) she had fun making a jingle bell necklace and mrs. droesch gave her the demo train she had made. again - lucky, lucky!

it was so great to wake up on monday the 19th and smile because...no school!!! that night for family night we invited grandpa eldon over and made up little bags of cutie oranges and attached tags that said "orange you glad we're friends/family/neighbors? we are!!" and took them around to our friends/family/neighbors. henry begged to doorbell ditch them, so we did :) it was so fun to hop in and out of the warm van on a chilly night, while dean martin and frank sinatra crooned carols in the background.