Merry Christmas! 

It's the second day of Christmas and we've been enjoying a quiet much-needed recovery day from all the fun and celebrating of the last day and a half.  Puzzles, games, naps, cookies...all is good.  On Christmas Eve we did our thing - Christmas vigil Mass and home to a huge homemade turkey feast with just our little family.  Cookies and music after and several very excited little boys bouncing around the house. 

Photo courtesy of John Paul

 And another by John Paul

 And this one's by me..I take the blurry ones...

And we welcomed in Christmas. 

The Story read.  Late bedtimes and early rising.  Gifts exchanged and homemade cinnamon rolls fresh out of the oven to greet the holy morning.

Exploring equipment for John Paul

An art set for Michael  


David's Mass set

Michael has been working on sewing this wool felt chick for the new baby's Christmas gift for months now.  We worked on it together and he pulled every stitch after I placed it for him.

We went to my mom's in the afternoon with the rest of my family for dinner and more celebrating.  We got to bring the birthday cake for Jesus and we enjoyed singing and fire and 15 children eight and under high on sugar and chocolate :)  We needed the recovery day.

 Chocolate mint cake with dark chocolate ganache.  Jesus approved. 

Not sure how the rest of these days of Christmas will be celebrated but there will be a Baptism in there somewhere and hopefully (please, God?) some SNOW.  We had a green Christmas day, despite all my hoping.  BUT Christmas isn't over yet, so it's not too late.  We are missing another family party today but we needed to take a break (I'm not even two weeks postpartum...so...right).  Brian will have to go back to work some this week and we'll enter into that time of reconfiguring the family dynamic to function now with one more little person added to the mix.  It will be okay.  It's kind of nice that it is happening during Christmas and I can (try) to be more relaxed with what gets done and when.  Stop laughing.  I at least won't have to worry about lessons for two more weeks.

I hope you had a wonderful opening to Christmas and are able to celebrate all of these holy days with joy and peace and are drawn ever deeper into the mystery that is the Incarnation of our God.  Merry Christmas, friends!