Merry Christmas!

Autumn came and went and winter is fully upon us. It's quite beautiful outside, this Christmas Eve. It's been kind of gray and snowing for days, but today the sun is out and everything outside is sparkly-white. The trees are covered with frost and all my birdhouses have roofs of snow. There's a bunny trail (which Arianna and I think is adorable) that goes from under the crabapple tree to the camping trailer.

I finished my cards and newsletter yesterday. The newsletter has been done for days, but I have been having major printer problems. Sometimes it just doesn't print write--like every fifth line or so will be highlighted or crooked. For about a month, everything I printed came out crooked. There'd be a one inch margin on the left at the top and by the time it got to the bottom the margin was about two inches. Every time I handed a report to an attorney or social worker I felt like I had to apologize. And then it started working fine. Until I went to print my holiday letter. I finally bought a cheap one just to get them done and out. It will also be good to have a back-up printer in case I keep having problems.

Last night I finished wrapping all the gifts. We're going to spend tonight at my parents house because we didn't even bother to put up a tree in the non-living room. Arianna was kind of bummed about it, so we joked that we should go spend the night at Grandma and Grandpa's so we could muster up some holiday spirit. Plus, we don't even have a couch or real chairs in the living room right now so the option is to sit in kitchen chairs or on the floor (which is usually pretty cold). When I mentioned it, Mom took it seriously and convinced us to come. It's going to be fun, I think. We're bringing "Meet Me in St. Louis", my favorite holiday movie and my mom has "White Christmas", which I've never seen, and we'll probably have to watch "A Christmas Story". We're bringing some games, too. I'm going to make bruschetta and mom is making pork or venison chops.

Christmas morning everyone else is coming around 10. I love Christmas at my parents. We all wear flannel pajamas the whole day and make it a leisurely day. We open gifts in the morning, with a snack/breakfast between the kids opening gifts and the adults starting, then play games, eat dinner, and play more games.

I'm a little sad, however, because this is the first year "Santa" won't be coming to our house. The kids have known for a long time that there's no Santa, but up until last year they still left out Pepsi and Doritos (instead of milk and cookies) on the Santa plate and special Santa glass and Santa still brought books and games for them. This year, though, they've left it all behind.

This is a picture from 2005 of the kids with their cousins:


Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!