Christmas Morning

Christmas Card

Well for those of you that don't live within a 15 min drive from my house you will have noticed that you have not received our Christmas card. So here it is for your viewing pleasure. Expect the real thing in 5 to 10 business days. Even if it is after Christmas. So sorry it's late!

Free Holiday Music

Oprah is giving away a free holiday Cd. With artist like Faith Hill, Il Divo, Tony Bennett, Harry Conick Jr., and Josh Groban. However you only have 48 hours so hurry.
Just go to http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahshow/20081118_tows_holiday/2 and start downloading. You can also download the cover art and give it as a gift to someone.

A new chair too!

Here is the project Stillman took on. We no longer have a chaise lounge. It was too hard to work into any room. For years we have been talking about just hacking off the end. Well, Stillman did it. He cut the middle off and attached the end board to the New end and then we just took the extra material and reapolstered it. Sounds easy right. Right. but he did it and it looks pretty good too.

Santa came early!

We took the kids to see Santa at the mall. In fine print under the pictures prices it says that "if you are taking your own pictures please limit them to two". So we snapped a few pictures. Alex was so excited to see him and then of course, true to nature, clammed up when he was face to face. He sat on Santa's lap with a cute grin and in a whisper barley audible asked for a blue car. Jayden loved Santa and reached up to play in his beard. he wasn't scared at all. So if you want free pictures of your kids and Santa you can go to the Boise Towne Square Mall and take two. Also Stillman's work gave him a Christmas bonus and we were able to buy this new sectional at a steal on craigslist. It is so comfortable. We rearranged the front rooms and now the green couches are in the living room and the sectional is in the front room. It looks good. you should come by and see it. Stillman has taken on a project that we have been planning to do for years and is turning our chase lounge into a regular chair so that it can fit better. I will post that project later.

A Blue,Blue,Blue,Blue Christmas

I saw these stockings and had to get them for our boys. So now we all have BSU stockings. I still like my traditional stockings but I have to admit these look good on our wall.

Tradition

Ti's the season for tradition. When Heather posted her post about her ornaments it reminded me of all of our traditions. So I was wondering what traditions you have. So post your traditions here in the comments or on your own blog.

My Grandma use to dress up as Santa Claus and we got to open a gift on Christmas Eve from "Santa's Helper". We continued the tradition when we moved to California. One year we were looking at pictures of us opening our presents and realized how ratty we looked. So that year we decided that on Christmas Eve we would open Pajamas. That way we looked cute on Christmas day. Stillman and I continued this on into our own little family.

One year all of our ornaments, stockings and decorations were stolen out of our rental shed along with some other things, by a bum who was living in the sheds. What wasn't stolen was burned by the fire he was using to keep warm. He was not hurt, we later saw him walking down the street in my mom's white furn coat. So Mom and I went to Costco in Reno and each bought one set of these beautiful white ornaments, some white lights, and some beads and bows. Brigitte and I had some ballerina ornaments that were not in the shed. That's all we had on our tree that year. So we decided that every year we would get an ornament in our stocking, so we could replace what was lost. Stillman and I do this also and when the kids are old enough to get married they will have 18+ ornaments to hang on their own tree.

Our last tradition is the twelve days of Christmas. We give a Twelve piece Nativity the twelve day before Christmas. This is my favorite because it helps bring the true meaning of Christmas to the foreground. last year we chose a family that was having a hard time. It was a Grandma who took care of her grandchildren full time. They were in our old ward and when we moved out I kept getting the feeling that I needed to do something for them. I pushed the thought aside because I didn't know how to get a hold of them as I new they were forced to move out of their apartment. When low and behold we were speaking in our new ward and I saw I them sitting on the back bench. We decided to do them for the twelve days of Christmas. on the Last day there was a note thanking us for the Nativity saying how they had lost theirs in the move. Over the next year she bore her testimony 3 times about her Christmas angels, never knowing we were sitting in the room with her.

So I would love to here your Christmas traditions.