Merry Christmas!

Whew!  We made it!  And we have had a wonderful Christmas.  I especially liked what my Sister-in-law told me the other day.  I was lamenting to her that last year the kids had a glorious time riding the "Polar Express" rapid transit train to see the lights downtown, and this year we never got up there.  Carrie told me that she saw Christmas as a buffet.  There are innumerable wonderful things you can do in the month of December, and no way you could do them all every single year.  So just like you don't have to get every single item at a buffet, each year you can pick out which wonderful things you do that year, and not worry about the rest when you are "full".

So we might not have gotten to see the lights, but I got to go see the Nutcracker for the first time with many of my sister-in-laws and some nieces.  It was so much fun, and I can't wait to take Kaitlyn next year!  I might have skipped my baking fest where we make cookies and goodies galore to give to teachers and bus drivers, etc, but we have a little tree in our house for the first time this year so our kids can put the ornaments they make or anything else they want all over it.  We didn't go to Disneyland, but we did pull out a book I've had for ages with a Christmas scripture, song and story to read each night before bed.  That's the one I am the most proud of.  I feel like Christ was a bigger part of this Christmas than most years.  We didn't decorate gingerbread houses, but we made gingerbread cookies and those are yummier anyway.  And we did get our big tree up . . . a week and a half before Christmas.  At that point, I debated on skipping it, but I am glad we didn't.

It just wouldn't be Christmas without the glow of those lights.

But that's getting ahead of myself.  First, we had our church Christmas party.  Kaitlyn had to stay home with a fever, but I was in charge of a "photo booth" where people could come and get their family picture taken.  I think it turned out pretty good!

I didn't have my family there to take a picture of, but my sweet babysitter went and got Tyler and Jasmine so she could play with them (I had to go rather early to set up), and Jasmine liked checking out the props and seeing what Mommy was up to.

And of course, they had to go meet Santa.  Tyler was thrilled.

Jasmine was less so.

She went and cried on her "Me-Kenna's" lap since her traitor mommy was the one that put her on Santa's lap in the first place.

And last night was the annual Skarda family party.  We acted out the Nativity in costumes . . .

,. . . had a concert of horns . ..

 . . . which Kaitlyn helped out with on her music maker, along with performing a song on the piano by herself . . .

. . . and then Santa came to visit!

Tyler and Kaitlyn were excited, obviously.  Kaitlyn had been asking for a bow and arrow for Christmas, but then last Saturday switched to "a fearless friend.  I saw them on a commercial.  They are animals that move all by themselves!"  The only problem is that google has no idea what a fearless friend IS.  The only thing by that name is a DVD set for kids with social anxiety disorders to help them cope with meeting friends.

Unfortunately for her, Santa didn't know what that was either.

Jasmine noticed that everyone who saw Santa got candy.  So she edged closer and closer . . . and though she didn't get on his lap, she did get close enough to say hi and snag a reward before running away.  Jackpot!  I was proud of her for improving.

As we were about to go home, I had the kids open a present with their new Christmas jammies.  I've decided I like that tradition- it is something they need anyway, it's fun to wear new clothes for Christmas, and then they look cute for pictures the next morning.  Tyler was sad when he outgrew his slippers, so I thought I would get him some new ones for Christmas.  But it turns out that all of the "fun" ones don't come in his size!  Boys slippers are mostly non-existent anyway, and when I did find them they were boring men's moccasins shrunk down.  After striking out at the fifth store, I began to think about making them myself.  I've made a lot of leather baby shoes in my life.  How hard could it be?  I came across shoe inserts at the dollar store and threw in the towel.

The answer to the question is that I had NO idea what I was doing.  These things look awful upon close inspection.  I figured that I would make them green (since green is for Tyler) and put a T on them (since I was too lazy to make them into dinosaurs or something).  I asked Kaitlyn if I should even give them to him, but she assured me that he would like them just fine.

And of course, he adored them.  You would think I had just give the kid the moon.  He was literally running around and doing happy dances for 15 minutes, telling everyone he could find about the "slippers with a T on them!  They have a T, they have a T!"

The next morning, Kaitlyn was the first one awake.

She was pretty excited about all the presents, but we decided we should wake up Tyler before we got started.  So Daddy jumped on his bed.

Tyler told him to stop, and even threatened "I'll flick you in the head, Daddy!" but eventually he woke up and made it downstairs.

And Jasmine joined us, too.

Jasmine was the most excited about the large pile of fruit snacks in her stocking.  She might be literally addicted to those by this point.  So when she got free reign this morning, she took full advantage.

Let me at 'em!

And I kinda loved her bunny slippers.  Which were store bought, and hence properly made.

I love having young kids that are so easy to please!

"Cheese!"

We helped the kids shop for each other this year at the Dollar store, and that worked out wonderfully.  Tyler got this sword from Kaitlyn and went around carefully cutting off all of our heads.

And Jasmine made us a picnic from Grandma's present.

This year I swore I would not push Tyler along.  Every year I get so excited for him to open the next thing that I push him away from playing this them to unwrapping, but this year I just let him be.  He opened his last gift at about 4:30pm!

Kaitlyn preferred the "rip it all open" approach, but she still loved playing with all of it.

And Jasmine loved playing with everyone else's toys.  And running around in her new snow boots.

And thankfully, Kaitlyn was thrilled with her bow and arrow set.  To top off her day, she discovered a loose tooth!  She has been hoping for one of those for a long time.

What a wonderful Christmas!  I am so grateful that I got to spend it with my awesome little family.

Why my Christmas tree still isn't up

We came back from Ohio and had to hit the ground running.  We've been planning on replacing the carpet since we bought the house, really.  It just looked bad from the beginning.  We've put it off for a while, thinking that our kids were little and would destroy the carpet anyway, but friends have told us that their teenagers are just as likely to spill things.  So when it was time to shift all of the rooms, we decided to go for it.  Tyler and Kaitlyn have been sharing one big bedroom, but it was a bit beyond time for the boy and girl to have separate spaces.  So Tyler needed to move into the little bedroom, which was filled with computer things.  The computers could then go into the nursery that is attached to the master, and Jasmine would move into the big girl room with her big sister.

Easy, right? Ha.  If we were doing that much, we might as well replace the carpet.

As Christopher says, he goes back and forth between loving it so much he can't believe we waited this long, to thinking that it was so much work he never wants to do it again.  We took everything from the kids' room and put it in the front room, forcing the kids to sleep in the basement for a week.

Everything in the office filled the nooks and crannies in our room.  And then we had to repaint both bedrooms.  Daddy helped the kids paint Tyler's new room the day they were waiting for their flight to Ohio.  That room had been painted yellow when we got the house, and while they painted the back of the door yellow (who does that?) it was a good enough paint job we left it until now.  And then when we got back, Kaitlyn helped paint over the blue to make it a girls room from here on out.

Daddy said they liked wearing one of his old shirts almost as much as they liked painting, which says a lot.

Anyway, after painting two rooms and all of the trim, all we had to do was rip out the carpet and pad, take out every single staple, vacuum all of the dust that used to be our pad, and haul it all off somewhere.  It only took a couple of days, but we got things ready for them to come and do the first half.

And we were in love.  SO much better!

The bad news was that they accidentally scheduled us for consecutive days, instead of giving us 3-4 days in-between to get the second half ready for them.  ACK!  I think in those two days combined, I got about 6-7 hours of sleep.  Thankfully we weren't painting the rooms in the second half, but just the trim.  And it was all worth it.

Before:

After:

 In the closet of the nursery, there was a piece of paper left under the carpet and pad dated 1978.  That means the carpet in the entire house was original to this 1979 house.  It was time!  Especially on the stairs, where the pad was literally nothing but dust.  Oh, and the crinkly plastic lining that someone put on our pad.  Every step on our carpet has always crinkled.  I remember when that sound used to wake Tyler up as I tiptoed away from setting him in his crib.

Now the kids love their rooms.  So far Tyler got the best end of the deal, since Jasmine has had a couple of rough night adjusting to going to sleep in a different room with someone else.

And the girls' room is a row of beds at the moment, since the un-stacked bunk beds are ready to go, but we don't have a mattress for Jasmine yet, so she's still in her toddler bed.  I splurged a bit on some Pottery Barn quilts, but they are just perfect!  Tyler needed a big boy quilt that was green, since Green is for Tyler.  And the girls have quilts that match in different colors.

We've still got a ways to go, though.  I've been trying to be careful and purge as we go.  Nothing goes back in the bedrooms that we don't actually need.  But that takes time.  And I need to send out my Christmas cards, get all the presents bought and shipped if needed, and make the calendars for each family.

At least I got the cards printed a while ago, so all I had to do was address them and get them out.

In the meantime, Kaitlyn had another piano recital.  It was cute- they had the recital of Christmas songs at a local nursing home so some of the residents could come and enjoy it as well.

So hopefully someday this week we'll get the tree up.  We got the one at the cabin put up, at least.

But since that one is 4 feet tall and the one at home is 12 feet, that doesn't say much.  It has been really cold around here, but I was glad we got one last drive to the cabin in before the snow dumped all the way down.

And even in 10 degrees, the kids loved playing in the 2 feet of powder.

Though I guess Tyler didn't like getting the snow in his eyes.

Such a silly girl.  In fact, the other day she made quite the outfit for herself.  I don't know if she even made the connection to our visit to the Christmas Story house or not, but I thought it was hilarious to see her walking around the house like this for an hour.

Time to get back to getting this house put back together!