2009 Christmas Memories

Here's hoping you all had a great Christmas at your house. I enjoyed the day too. It's different once your kids grow up and you actually get to sleep in. I woke up at 6:00, got up at 6:30. Then I just puttered around the house waiting for Terrell & Kimball to wake up.

Here's one of the activities I engaged in while waiting:

I had a plate of sticky rolls in the kitchen that were rock hard. Instead of throwing them out, I knocked the centers out of them, tied some yarn through them and hung them in the apple tree out in the back yard. I hope the birds enjoy them.

Terrell finally woke up at 10:00, Kimball at 10:30. We opened presents and had breakfast (a sausage breakfast strata). Then it was pretty quiet again - until that evening.

A couple weeks ago I decided on the border for Kimball's quilt and finished his quilt top. Since Kimball hadn't seen the completed quilt top, I wrapped it and gave it to him for Christmas. I'm still at a loss for how to quilt this, so if you have any ideas, please let me know.


Christmas evening, a family friend (Jeff) joined us, along with Brad & family & Emilie & Curtis for my traditional Christmas dinner - Costco frozen lasagna. (It requires no effort other than putting it in the oven to cook!) This year I served with it: homemade crescent rolls, pretzel salad, twice baked potatoes, tossed salad and green beans. It's also tradition to have English crackers for everyone to open before we start the meal.

Inside each cracker is a paper crown, a joke, and a toy. Here is Cailyn with her toy:



Everyone wearing their paper crown just before we turned off the lights to eat by candlelight.

After dinner I did something that I think will be a new tradition. I passed out kazoo's to everyone and we had a Christmas kazoo band. It was a lot of fun!

Cailyn with her kazoo


Brad with his kazoo


Gavin's kazoo at the end of the night

After humming (kazoo'ing) for awhile, we decided to share our talent with the neighbors. We bundled up and walked around the block, stopping at a few houses to entertain certain families.

I recorded one of the songs - the lights were still out, so you can only hear us.

Merry Christmas!

My son Kimball introduced me to the comic strip "The Argyle Sweater" It reminds me of another old favorite comic strip - "The Far Side". The Argyle Sweater isn't in my local paper, so I have to look it up online.

We are mostly ready to Christmas at this house. Well... not Terrell. He never does any Christmas shopping until the 24th, so we know what he will be doing today. Christmas is pretty easy for me, I don't do anything that causes any stress to my life. So that means I don't do holiday cooking & I send out Christmas cards if I have time. This year we sent out a photo Christmas card, I didn't even type up a family letter to go with it this year. Sometime I want to send out a family letter like this one:


We did do a fun Christmas picture for our card this year:


It's been rather quiet around my house for the past few months. I decided last January, that 2009 would be my last year doing daycare. (Did I mention I've been doing daycare for 18 years?) Over the past few months, the number of children that I watch has slowly decreased. By the beginning of December, I was only watching 4 children, and only one of those was full time (well, he wasn't even full time because he only came Mon-Thurs). Last Tuesday was my last day.

Remember this picture from a post several weeks ago?


Yesterday I spent a chunk of time cleaning, throwing out old toys, and putting things away. Here's what my house looks like now - I'm ready for it to be a kid-free zone.

family room


All the play pens are put away. I'll probably get rid of all of them except one.


One of the "toy buckets". This was before I went thru it and threw a bunch of toys away


I bought this last fall at Ikea. I have kept it at the top of the stairs in the hall, so I could watch kids playing with it - to make sure they didn't beat the heck out of it. I moved it downstairs yesterday so it is with the other "play house" things. I will probably get out some of the play food and stock it up, for the grandkids to play with.

Here are my cute grandkids. From now on, they will be the only kids I tend:

Cailyn - sporting a new nail job - each finger nail has a rhinestone stuck on it.


Gavin - this was on Thanksgiving, after he had played in the water fountain at the church where we held our "Ashcraft Family Thanksgiving" dinner.

Decorating for Christmas

I've been putting up Christmas decorations this week.





No, I don't have a thing for purple. All these purple decorations are what we used 2 years ago for my one & only daughter's wedding reception. What a day that was! It's fun to go back and look at the pictures from that day:


It was a bitter c-o-l-d day. But her outdoor pictures are so beautiful.





Notice the gorgeous wreath in the background. My fabulous talented SIL Jenny made it. Now it hangs outside my front door at Christmas time.

We bought so many purple & silver Christmas balls! Two years later, my eye is still drawn to that color when I look at Christmas decorations in stores.



One of these years I think I will buy some white lights and decorate my tree in purple & silver too. But not this year. Here's my tree and the way it has been decorated for the past 26 years.

Over the years the only think that has changed is the growing number of ornaments. They remind me of places I've visited, and people I have known. Such a great tradition.

What Mac fans have known since 1984

Applause. . .

I started a project last week and put the finishing touches on it yesterday! I bought an advent calender kit last year after the holidays at Mormon Handicraft. It was something like 75% off, so I got it for just a few dollars. You can still find the pattern here (Michael Miller website) for free.

I've looked all year long for some little Christmas ornaments to hang on it & they were usually too expensive when I added up that I needed 24 of them. I finally found some last weekend at Joann's, and they were 50% off to boot! All of them only cost $5.00.

Here is the finished project...


Each present is a pocket that holds an ornament. Each day you take one ornament out and tie it onto the tree. When the tree is decorated, Christmas day is here!

Now it's time to work on getting the big tree out of the storage shed, into the house and decorated.

P.S. I just looked out the window & huge fluffy snowflakes are falling! Hoping that means it will warm up. It has been C-O-L-D here the past few days.