Christmas preparations

Christmas season is in full swing around here. The tree is up (thanks to the kids). I pulled out the Bethlehem village the other day and have that on display. We have been doing the Jesse tree and really enjoying that as well. The stockings are hung up on the mantle, the presents are neatly wrapped under the tree in my closet waiting to be wrapped. The Christmas letter just needs to be printed, the cards still need to be addressed, and I finally got the kids picture taken and are waiting to get them back from being printed. I still need to get a family picture taken for Grandma, but you would not believe how hard it is to get all of us together with someone else around to take the picture. After all, it IS the Christmas season.



This year I actually planned ahead for the Christmas picture. In previous years, it has been one of those "Hey, everyone get near the tree. I need a Christmas picture!" kinda moments. Whatever they were wearing at the time. We take a couple of shots, pick the one where the kids look fairly normal, and be done. This year I found coordinating sweaters, cute little hats for everyone (Yes, J-Bird had one. We will find it now that the picture has been taken), and we waited for the puppies to come so we could get them in it too. Well, don't tell a momma dog to just relax in front of a bunch of kids for a Christmas shot when she has 3 day old pups. Doesn't' work. So, we took shots of each of the kids kids holding "their" pup, and a group shot to go in the Christmas cards. We actually got some cute shots, but it looked better in my head. For one thing, we didn't have snow until 3 days ago, and I was thinking an outside shot may be possible. That was before we had a foot of the white stuff dumped in our lap. Second, I have hams, not children. They are continuously flashing a gansta sign (even if they have no clue what a gansta is), making faces, coming up with different facial expressions, and poses. This is the one time of year that I want to prove that my kids are sweet, normal, little angels. Instead, they prove that they really are a product of me.



Poor kids.