Enjoy this wonderful Christmas season! :)

Well here it is two am....did I just say TWO?!? ummm yeah..I did...well in that case this will be very short and sweet!

Today was a wonderful day. We had Christmas at home. We were home by ourselves with only Grandma(hubby's mom) here. It was much quieter than it is some years...especially those spent with my family!! We missed them all today! We had some friends over...7 of them. So altogether we had 14 people for Christmas dinner..It was fun and the food was yummy! We finished off the day singing Christmas carols in livingroom, accompanied by Lindsay on her guitar. Everyone sang along and seemed to enjoy themselves. After that the kids brought in the karaoke machine and everyone had fun singing along to Frank Sinatra, Julie Andrews and some others. It got quite lively with Louise taking the mike and singing "New York New York" with Frank. :) All in all it was a good day filled with lots of fun and laughter and good food. We are so thankful that Jesus came to this Earth to die so that we could live! He is so gracious and merciful to each one of us and I am soo thankful for that!
I hope you had a wonderful Christmas with your loved ones!
Have a wonderful time this Christmas season as we celebrate the birth of our Saviour.
Love Heather
ps
will post some Christmas pictures for you -- hopefully tomorrow...but maybe the next day..I think we are having more friends over tomorroww....from now til New Years...party party party....well actually ...truth be told..it's more like visit visit visit~ It's so nice for everyone to have time off to be able to spend time together and just soak up the togetherness of it all!

Our Christmas

Well here it is...two days past Christmas already!! I can't believe how fast time flies...it's kinda sad to see the Christmas holidays pass so quickly.
Like I mentioned in previous posts, we stayed home this year and didn't have any family around...which for many of you would be normal but not for us! But anyway...our Christmas day turned out very nicely. We had some friends over for the day. We made dinner together...two turkeys!! We both had tons left over. It's kinda funny how alike our families are. Most of the time when we have company over I forget to make dessert. So this time I made sure I picked up a pumpkin and apple pie on Christmas Eve. I chuckled to myself when I told Louise that I had picked up a couple pies for dessert because she had a similar reaction to what mine would have been...oh yeah--dessert!?! I think we all enjoyed the day. We ate dinner fairly early..if I remember right! We played a game of charades altogether. There were enough of us to make 3 teams. It was alot of fun. These friends are about as close to family as we could ever get. After dinner, Randal headed up to the hospital to visit his mom. While he was gone Louise knitted, Steve napped for an hour or two on the lazy boy(sounds like family,hey?!), the girls made cookies, some of the kids played nintendo, some played on the computer and some of the others just played. (we have 8 kids between us.) All in all it was a relaxing, enjoyable day. I really enjoyed the wonderful family atmosphere. I hope you all had a great Christmas.

DONE!!

I finished my Christmas shopping!! I shopped for all four kids in two evenings...about 4 hours! I did it with wish lists in hand and the cash in my pocket! The best way to avoid over shopping! If you don't have a debit card in your pocket to fall back on this really helps you stay within budget when you see something that you "know they would love" but is way over budget! It's not as fun but it is a good way to keep yourself(myself) from overspending. Anyway...now we just need to wrap it all up. I told Randal that I did the hunting and gathering of the gifts and now it's time for him to do the wrapping of the gifts. :D I'm sure we'll do it together.
I'd like to do a little bit of baking since we'll be staying home. I usually do a little bit to take with us but not alot because we (my siblings) all bring something with us when we all get together. We will definitely miss everyone this year...and Auntie Shanda and Uncle Craig's deep fried crispy turkey! And then there are all those yummy goodies that Auntie Shanda makes....she's always trying new things and we get to enjoy them!! Great Grandma's tarts...Auntie Tracie's tarts....okay okay...enough....I'm starting to drool. I think maybe tomorrow I'll make some butter tarts!! Well have a great Sunday....the last before Christmas! I can hardly believe that it's the 22nd of December! The year has flown by!
Happy Sunday!!
:) Heather