Grandma's Christmas cactus

While we were up north for Christmas my mom showed me this. My grandma's Christmas cactus was starting to bloom. The first bloom to come out was the one by Wyatt's picture. This was a tender mercy for me to see. I don't feel like it was a coincidence. I feel like it was a love note from a couple of people I love and miss.

Doll

Last year my uncle called me and said he had a doll he wanted to give me. His wife, my aunt had passed away 5 months after Wyatt. She had bought this doll many years ago and he decided that she would want me to have it. It's an old doll..an antique. I found the perfect place for him during christmas...next to Wyatt's tree. This doll is about the same exact size as Wyatt was before he died. The first time I held him I cried. I love having something of my aunts in my house. I keep this doll in Wyatt's room. Such a sweet and thoughtful gift that I will always cherish.

Merry Christmas Emily

Merry Christmas to Emily. She has begged and begged for years for a dog so when we got Macie in August we told her that it was her birthday and Christmas presents. She has been ok with that. She LOVES her dog and has been really good to take care of her. She has shown us that she can be responsible and we are proud of her for that. Macie has become a part of the family. We have really enjoyed her. More than I ever thought we would. She is a very good dog which makes a big difference for me and it's hard not to fall in love with her sweet and sad puppy dog eyes.

Emily with her Christmas present.

Lost tooth/Perfume

Hay lost a tooth during Christmas break and enjoyed having the tooth fairy come.
We got some laughs over this one. Hayl got into my perfume and put on WAAAYYY too much. After doing so she kept wanting to sit on her dad's lap. Finally, he couldn't stand it anymore and went out to his shop and came back with this on. We laughed for a long time.

I love my husband's sense of humor. He can always make us laugh and we love that about him.

Christmas break

A few of our favorite games

So what did we do during Christmas break? We relaxed, played games, did a puzzle together, watched movies, slept in, read Christmas books, organized rooms, played the Wii, played with friends, took a short trip up north to see family after Christmas and just enjoyed doing whatever we wanted. It was simply perfect and I hated to see it end. I love having my kids home with me.

The puzzle we did for one of the days.

One of our traditions each year is to wrap up our Christmas books and open one each day and read it. The girls this year took on the task of wrapping up all the books. Which was greatly appreciated by me. They enjoyed opening them and seeing what book we would read that night under the Christmas tree. We didn't get through all the books this year nor did we get around to reading one every single night but at least we tried. I think that's a tradition my kids will always remember and have some fond memories of. At least that is what I hope.

Lights

I saw this idea on one of my friends blogs and decided to copy it. I put up white lights above our table. I added a few stars from Wyatt's tree and a bow on top of the chandelier to dress it up a bit. We have been able to enjoy some festive ambiance with our dinners each night. I love lights...especially white ones. Each night for dinner we would light some candles and enjoy the soft glow of all the christmas lights. I've decided to keep these lights up through the winter months just for fun.

Snow

I'm hoping to get all caught up with posts from Christmas this week. We will see. This is something I found and used for one of our bags before Christmas. It's snow...since we don't get it much here I thought it would be fun for the kids to play with some snow. It's actually really cool how it works. There is this powder stuff you add water to and it expands and becomes snow. It's even kind of cold to the touch. Anyway, it was a fun activity. The kids had a good time playing with it. The cool thing about this snow is that it will go back to the powder state so we can use it again next year.

Santa/Nativity

We are so blessed to live by Tuachan Amphitheater. We have enjoyed so many plays and programs there. They have enriched our lives and brought much goodness to us. I LOVE musicals. It's a fact! So, it's been a big blessing for me to be able to enjoy so many musicals and programs the past few years.

Each Christmas at Tuachan they put on a live nativity. The last time we went to it was when Wyatt was with us. D and the kids actually got to be in the play and I sat in the audience with Wyatt and my parents. It is one of those memories I will never forget and I'm so glad we did that so I have another memory of Wyatt to remember. He sat in his car seat the whole time covered up with blankets because it was a very cold night.

Well, this year we decided to go and watch the live nativity and sit on Santa's lap. It was a very fun night. Em brought her friend with her and they both talked about being in the live nativity next year. So, I think we are going to try to do that next year. It's a great way to bring the true meaning of Christmas into our life. Here are a few pictures I took that night.

Hay is the only kid of ours that hasn't been scared of Santa. It's so fun to be able to get pictures with him.

The live nativity

They have real animals in it. Love the camel!

The girls

A couple of Elves

Pictures by the tree

Each year I try to get pictures of the kids by the Christmas tree. The past couple I'm not sure I did that. So, this year I made sure we took the time. I also tried to have a picture of Wyatt from the tree in each picture. Just as a reminder that he is still a BIG part of our family and will never be forgotten.



Hayley loves to pose so I have a hard time not taking a lot of pictures of her. The other two it's like torture for them to have to have their pictures taken so hence they don't get as many pictures of them. I think it has something to do with the age. So, I'm enjoying Hayley at this point because she lets me take lots of pictures of her.

She had to have one with the dog. Macie on the other hand didn't want to cooperate.

Hayley loved her Christmas dress and especially enjoyed twirling around in it.

The picture hanging on the tree is of her on Christmas eve 6 years ago. Can't believe how much she has grown up. Macie in her Christmas dress. Poor dog gets dressed up all the time.

SNOW DAY!

This morning we woke up to a nice little present for our last day of Christmas break...SNOW! For us this really is a sweet little gift. We don't get snow here very often usually once a year and this morning happened to be the day. So we got out the snow gear and went sledding. It was fun. We then went to Wyatt's grave and made a snowman. Something we have never done before. It was pretty to see the blanket of snow on everything.

I continue to wonder how Wyatt would have enjoyed these different activities that we do as a family. I think he would have loved the snow today like any 3 year old would. We miss him and what he would be doing right now. But I do believe we will get to experience the snow with him someday. It's the wait that is beyond hard.

Here are a bunch of pictures I took this morning.








Can you tell what she is doing? I thought we had a no whining zone.
Tyler turned the sled into a snowboard.

Hayley enjoyed making a snow angel...I thought of our little angel watching over us.



Snowman at Wyatt's grave.

I have about 14 posts to do from the past month. I'm hoping to get some of them done this week. We really enjoyed our December as a family. We did lots of fun things along with continuing many traditions from the years past. I hate to see it end as school starts tomorrow. I love having my kids at home where we can do whatever we want...it's wonderful!