Christmas Time...Busy Time!

This month has FLOWN by! I've been lucky enough to be swamped with photography work..Thank you to all of you who have called me up for some pics! I LOVE IT! Needless to say, with all of that, Christmas parties, shopping, baking, wrapping, gift creating...it's been one super busy month! But, FUN busy!

This collage showcases the fun family parties we've had this season. And they were LOTS of fun. There's nothing like cramming a bunch of family into a room and opening presents! So fun! Thanks to everyone for the greatest gifts!!! Grandma and Grandpa Gadd spoiled us with 5 new games!!! Woo Hoo! We really needed a serious upgrade to our game closet! Family Night will be much more exciting!!! Thank you!!!

And Grandma P. was sweet enough to sew some curtains for my bedroom...yeah, 4 years living here and still no curtains, so thanks mom! Now I just gotta put them up! And Grandpa P. spoiled the boys with new sleds...woo hoo! They tried them out right away and LOVE them! My sister Brittany gave our family a fun movie night bag and my sister-in-law gave me a darling Christmas vinyl wall decoration with a movie night bucket. Thanks you guys! We love movie night at our house! (which is pretty much almost every night... so perfect gift!)

I finally got around to sending out Christmas cards on December 20th, (if you didn't get one, it's because I don't have your address! So email me your address!!!) and then made neighbor cookies on the 22nd...Sadie "helped". She was sooo cute. She would sprinkle little bits of flour whenever I did, use the rolling pin, exactly how I rolled it and even cut out lots of cookies. What a great helper! I couldn't resist taking these fun photos of her helping! Unfortunately, I forgot to take some picture of the decorated finished product. But if any of you get Lara Garner's cookies...mine look similar...certainly not quite as detailed, but I try. Thanks Lara for sharing your yummy recipe!

The Sunday before Christmas. It's a tradition at our house that Mommy takes some pictures of the kids in their church clothes in front of the tree just before Christmas. I guess that's what you get when you have a photographer for a mom. As soon as we finished with the pictures, Sadie announced.."I need to dance." She began dancing all around the room. A few seconds later, she tripped and knocked her head on the table. A HUGE goose egg emerged. (no photo sorry...Mommy was freaking out!) So glad we got the pictures before the bulging bruise! To top it all off, only a couple hours later she was playing with her brothers and a door got slammed a little to close to her head and the doorknob made a nice goose egg on the other side of her head! My poor little girl! (so notice the rest of the pictures with Sadie's bluish, greenish head...)

Christmas Eve was, well, different. Poor Matt had to work until 8pm, getting him home around 8:30pm. It did give me a chance to give the house a nice cleaning...which it desperately needed! So, no Christmas Eve dinner...we decided to do it Christmas Day instead. When Daddy came home we did our usual traditions....make homemade donuts, drink hot chocolate; Read Luke 2 while shining flashlights on all the nativity characters. The kids open their one present...which is always jammies, of course! And this year they were from Grandma P. Thank you! The boys were decked out in Batman jammies with capes and all! And sweet Sadie in her night gown, or "dress" as she calls it! They were so excited...hence the jumping down the stairs photos below!

Christmas morning was filled with fun and excitement. The boys tore open gifts with shouts of joy! Spencer especially has a dramatic shout of glee with the opening of each gift. (dramatic? wonder where he gets that?) They loved the IronMan figures, Nerf guns, Bakugan characters, Transformers, and Batman garb they got. And Spencer finally got his most anticipated gift... Bendaroos.

Sweet Sadie was a little sleepy, since she wouldn't go to bed until midnight...(yeah, Santa came REALLY late) but after waking up a little she got more smiley and excited! Matt loved his new warm winter coat I gave him and I loved my new favorite movie Matt gave me... WALL-E. (Oh how I love that show..thanks babe!) Sadie really loved her biggest gift...a BIG GIRL BED! YAY no more crib! Yes, she has been sleeping in a crib until now. We finally decided she was too big. Her head touched one end and her feet the other...I guess it's time for an upgrade! She was also excited to see the Doll House her Grandma P. refinished for her, moved into her room. It was the same dollhouse I played with. I still nee do update the wallpaper, but for now, Sadie LOVES it! Thanks Grandma!

And the biggest story of all on Christmas day was the enormous snow storm that had us snowed in! All day it was a blowing, can't see across the street, blizzard! When we went out to start clearing snow...this is what we found...

We quickly turned the snow into a fun playground! The crazy part is, that night it snowed another 8 inches and the next day another 4! That's a lot of snow folks! But it's so much fun!

And finally, last night we had a fun family party...ALL of my siblings and their kids and both of my parents were able to come for some Christmas fun. Sadie LOVES her little cousin McKenzee. They are exactly the same age and LOVE hanging out together. For several days leading up to yesterday, Sadie kept asking, "When is my Kenzee coming?" Grandma made cute matching nightgowns for them, so they put them on and played and played and played. They announced to everyone, "we are best friends." Grandma even made a little nightgown for little Amelia (Kenzee's little sister) The three of them look adorable don't you think?

So thank you to everyone for the nice gifts, tasty goodies and great friendship! I LOVE Christmas time, not only for all the stuff, but mostly because of the great spirit it brings into our home. I'm so grateful for such awesome friends and amazing family. I feel like the luckiest girl ever to have such a great husband, fun boys, and a sweet little girl. I couldn't ask for anything more. The things that matter most in life, aren't things....