Christmas Traditions.

We have a few Christmas traditions around here, that have evolved over our 26 years as a family.  It's funny because as a young woman I was worried that because of my random personality and outside-the-box thinking and difficulty establishing routines, that I would be completely unable to establish any holiday traditions.  It seems silly, but I think I didn't realize how much the kids help with the keeping of the traditions.  The mom only has to do them a few times and then the kids internalize them and keep them going.  It's great!

We have several things we do.  We put up our tree on the day after Thanksgiving, most years.  Sometimes it doesn't get done that day, but most of the time it does.  When putting up the tree, we put up our little wooden nativity and our Christmas count down thingy.  Usually we hang our stockings the same day, but this year they are tangled up on the string they were on last year and no one has tackled untangling that yet.

Then we have parties we attend, with the families and the homeschool group and events at church, gift exchanges we get in with family and friends, the shopping day, etc.

We also have a list of movies that we watch, our own little eclectic list that probably shares a lot in common with other peoples lists, :-)  Ours include Elf, Home Alone 1 and 2,

The Santa Clause 1, 2 and 3, How the Grinch Stole Christmas (original cartoon), A Charlie Brown Christmas (Original cartoon), While You Were Sleeping (one of my all time favs, I have shared with the kids) and Veggie Tales - The Toy that Saved Christmas among others I can't think of at this time.  :-)

While shopping with the mom's group the other day, at Family Christian Stores, I stumbled onto this!  Six Holiday Favorites,

It's a Meaningful Life

Saint Nicholas: A Story of Joyful Giving

The Little Drummer Boy

The Toy that Saved Christmas

The Star of Christmas

Christmas Sing-A-Long

Veggie Tales Ultimate Christmas Collection and they have a 25% off coupon this week!   Cyber Week Sale Coupon Code which, yes, brings it down to the price they have it at at other stores, but this store is nonprofit and all of their profits go to charity so it's a win-win shopping here.

NOTE:  I promise that every blog post in the future will not be an advertisement.  I'm just excited about this right now!  

I'm thinking of trying to organize my blog posts weekly, with posts on crafts, homeschooling, medical transcription (my career), family life, etc.  We will see how that goes with my personality, but I am going to try!

Tired.

That's the word for it.  My mom had to be at the pain clinic for a procedure at 7:40 a.m. this morning.  She lives about an hour from me and about an hour to the pain clinic, so before 7:40 a.m., I was on the road for 2 hours.  Then we were at the clinic for 3 hours.  Then, 2 hours back home.  I had to get up just a tad earlier than I would normally.  :-)  Like 3 hours.  Anyway. I got it done though I had to roll down the windows of the car on the way home to stay awake.  In the hour, I have been home, I've made chili and vegetable soup and now I am planning to go to bed for the rest of the after
noon!

Shopping!

It's our annual mom's day out Christmas shopping day!  It's socialization time for the homeschooling mamas !   Actually homeschooling is how we met, but probably about half of us are no longer homeschooling but that's okay.  Over the years homeschooling has become secondary to our relationships.  We are a family.

Visit over. :-(

My son and his girlfriend are getting ready to go back to school this morning.  We will miss them.  It will only be a few weeks until our son comes home again for Christmas though.  I hope that we will get to see her for spring break, but I guess we will have to see.  I am not good with all this distance, but there's not much I can do about it.  If we moved south to be closer to our son, we'd be farther away from everyone else.  :-(  I hope that circumstances bring him near here again in the future, but there's nothing I can do about it if they don't.  

Can you all believe that Thanksgiving is over, just like that!?   I can never believe when this season gets here.  It seems like it sneaks up on me every year!  I think over the years I have gotten a bit more wisdom about taking things as they come and not stressing too much about it.  We'll see I guess.  So what did we do this week?  We got together with friends and family.  We feasted.  We played games.  We ate leftovers.  We watched movies.  We put up the Christmas tree.  We bonded.   We visited.  We played charades.  We looked at old photos.

Now it's time to look forward to the Christmas season!

(note:  Family Christian has extended their doorbusters to today!  We went and bought several yesterday.  )  So if your kicking yourself for not buying that little people navitity ... here's your chance ... also they need some help getting to 100% of their goal money raised to fight human trafficking.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Have a wonderful day! We have snow on the ground today so it is the first white Thanksgiving for our visiting southern girl.  Fun times!  :-)

Having fun!

We took the town tour today and we went and met with the homeschool group.  We practically took over the Fazoli's.  It was awesome.  :-)  We are enjoying our son being home and the process of getting to know his girlfriend, who is very sweet.  Since we homeschool, we cancelled school for the youngest this week.  If his big brother is home, he's not in school.  The big brother is away at school just enough time each year so we can get our school work done here with this rule. They are playing Mario right now and we are baking gluten free chocolate chip cookies.

Tomorrow, I may go do a little shopping  I've recently started doing some reviews and things for Family Christian Stores and I've learned some interesting things about these stores.  First of all, they are nonprofit.  They give all of their profits to charity.  This week, it is a charity working to free people who are victims of human trafficking.  That's something we don't like to think about when it's this time of year and we are sitting in our homes feeling thankful, but with this promotion, we can go shopping for a gift for someone and help someone else at the same time.  That's a win-win.

Also, this week, they will have some great things for sale   For example, they will have the Little People Nativity for 21.49 STARTING tomorrow, November 26, 2014, which is the best deal I've ever seen on it.  I've always wanted one ... so this might be my year.  :-)

Today, is one month away from Christmas, can you believe that????!!!!!

Today's the day!

My son is coming home for Thanksgiving and is bringing his girlfriend so we get to meet her!  We have a low key, but fun (I hope) week planned.  I wish I felt better.  I'm still feeling some pain and soreness from my surgery last Monday.  I have had this exact surgery before and I bounced back much more quickly the last time.  This time, the last couple of days actually have been worse, but I think that is because I have been trying to do too much.  :-(    Oh well.  A little bit more cleaning and some cooking today and then I will relax as much as I can this week, while visiting and talking.  :-)

Looking forward to Thanksgiving!

This photo is unrelated ... I think I might try art-journaling something similar again ....

Chair re-do!

A few years ago, we bought a used dining room set.  It has steel chairs which will never, ever, break, I'm pretty sure.  Over the years, we have recovered the padded seats in the chairs many, many times.  My daughter says that we have covered them in progressively uglier fabrics (until now!) but in my defense, this paisley fabric that looks so awful now, was prettier/brighter back when we put it on a couple of years ago.  Now it looks all gray.  Anyway, we went to the fabric store the other day and bought a couple of yards of 2 different chevron fabrics.  We wanted the lighter blue but they only had one yard of that, so we got a dark blue and went with a mismatched effect- light blue on 2 chairs and darker blue on the other 2.   I love them now!  This whole makeover cost around 11 dollars because Hancock fabrics was having a sale.  Awesome.  :-)