your Christmas tree is still up?

S has been off for 5 days. YAY! After an extremely busy past couple of months at the pharmacy culminating with inventory last weekend where we basically didn't see him for 3-4 days, this break was much needed - for him, and the rest of us. His main project has been mudding, taping and painting the big new trapezoid windows we had installed in October (yes really, he has not had a day to do this project since then!). The installers put up the sheetrock (not very well, which made S's job harder), but didn't do finishing work. The other project we got to was getting the Christmas stuff taken down, organized, and put away. And since we are doing that in the house, I also thought I would finish posting Christmas stuff here on the blog too!

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We celebrated Christmas with the B's the second weekend in January - everyone was busy in December and couldn't get together for more than an evening, so we thought we would just celebrate in January and be able to spend a whole weekend together instead. So here are pictures of the weekend (thanks to Dad B and s.i.l. M for sharing some of their photos).

Wonderful soup and bread at J&C's Friday evening (each of us couples took a meal as to spread the food duty out - worked awesome).

Brunch at our place Saturday morning (C made Pioneer Woman's cinnamon rolls which we both have read the raves about on her blog - well, the raves were completely right! They were soooo good!).

Opening Christmas presents after brunch


M taking pictures of the kids.

Little C enjoying some of his new presents!

The adults exchanged names and each of us got a book as a gift - all of us love to read, and you can see we are passing that on to the kids!

Saturday afternoon was filled with a lot of playing, of course.

J & C's golden doodle puppy, Pippin, came along for the day and we all enjoyed having him around - he is such a good dog!

Playing our new card game, the Great Dalmuti (crowns for the Great and Lesser Dalmuti and Jester hats for the Peons were a must) before we enjoyed C & M's homemade pizza Saturday evening.

Sunday, after church and Mom B's chicken enchiladas for lunch, we celebrated birthdays for little C, G & K, who all have birthdays in January and February. We ate cake and relaxed a bit before returning home or to evening church. Mom and Dad B watched our kids so we could attend our evening service and partake in the Lord's Supper - very strange but very nice to be at church and not have to hold 1-3 kids and/or leave the service 1-3 times (thanks Mom and Dad B!).

We had a lot of fun over the weekend with gifts and games and food, but most of all we enjoyed spending time together as a family.

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One of the reasons we left the Christmas decorations up so long was that Christmas gift opening has been spread out quite a bit this month due to not everyone making it to Nebraska for Christmas. It gave me a good excuse to keep the tree up! Last weekend my parents brought up gifts from my brother L & his girlfriend J. G was particularly delighted with her gift of all things pink! Thanks L & J for the fun gifts!

Then this week we received a package in the mail with gifts from Nana (my gma K). We always love getting packages from Nana and she definitely went all out on this one. The kids got hand-knit sweaters, Steve got a knit hat, and I got a clutch bag and a beautifully soft and ingenious knitted neck scarf. Thanks so much Gma! We love all the gifts!

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As for the Fa-La-Lattes CD's, they rock on in our house all year round...