somewhere along the way, we all got lost...

Happy new year, everyone! We hope you had a wonderful Christmas. At our house, it seems to have stretched on forever. But for once, I'm ready to march on into the new year. Well, that might be pushing it, since we're still dragging our tired selves out of bed between 8 and 9 every morning (the best Christmas present EVER: our kids have slept in almost every morning of this Christmas break!) but I'm confident that with a few early bed times we'll all catch up on energy before school starts!

In the interst of starting fresh for the new year, I spent this morning browsing through my Picasa folders and checking the blog and I see that since November I've skipped quite a bit of what's been going on around here - and that's my explanation for this posting's title too. So, here's a bit of a rundown of the things we missed:


There have been a lot of variants of dress up going on around our house. I like the above picture because I think they look like they belong about a hundred years ago. I can just picture them sitting like this on suitcases on some London street. Maybe I read too much fiction...

Mummy's safety glasses are another popular dress up accessory. No wonder I can never find them when it's time to prune the trees...

And of course there's always the role playing games. I have no idea what they were playing here, but it probably involved a princess, a hero and some sort of space ship. And as you can tell, puddles and no rain gear.

This one is rock bowling. And from before we discovered the Retro Toon channel and Fred Flinstone ;)




David went to The Most Awesome Birthday Party Ever in December. He made this reindeer hat (a clever ploy by the mom to make sure all 14 kids had their names attached to their bodies so she could at least attempt to control them), a picture frame (which holds the santa picture he had taken later at the party!), a gift bag and countless other crafts. And then in his goody bag he got this set of cars to make too. So fun!


Elisabeth had her first every Christmas concert. I really can't believe we didn't blog this one. Well, except that I wasn't really there. I was helping David's kindergarten teacher clean up for Christmas so Andrew went and recorded it all for me. I have video, but the only people who sang the songs were the teachers, so we'll make do with some cute pictures of all the reindeer.


Elisabeth got the stocking above and they made the reindeer sandwiches below. So much fun!


As soon as their party was over, Andrew brought Elisabeth down the hall to David's class where we were just about to start our own party. And even though Elisabeth apparently ate a TON of food at her own party, she continued and ate two platefuls at David's party too!


And finally, Christmas Day. For some reason my camera was not attached to me like it usually is. So all I have from Christmas Day are five very fuzzy pictures. But let me assure you, it was a raging success. Kathi and Cody's family came for dinner (they provided the DELICIOUS turkey and stuffing and gravy! which only left me on the hook for veggies. YAY!), Rob came to town (he's still here), and David was finished work by late afternoon (though we were all sad that he had to work Christmas Day, but at least he was home for dinner.)

This was the first Christmas where we absolutely had to be strict about our spending. I really had no idea it would be so hard to find a job this time of year, and we had a strict no-credit rule. Thankfully, our kids are awesome and we were able to give each of them exactly what they had asked for. And they have incredible aunts, uncles, grandparents and friends who spoiled them rotten. So I don't think we even noticed that it was a slimmer Christmas than previously.



The only thing David wanted for Christmas was a spiderman sponge. You know, one of those things that you put in water and it grows? He got that in his stocking.

And as long as it's got princesses, Elisabeth is happy. Here she is sporting her Tinkerbell necklace and nose jewels.