A Late Merry Christmas

Hello to everyone and we hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. We hope everyone was able to spend time with family and loved ones.
All was wonderful here. We all arrived safely at my parents in Nevada City on Christmas Eve. It was a pretty slow drive because of the snow and traffic, but we made it.
Santa arrived promptly just after the kids bedtime and was able to set up their new Wii. He even made their Mii characters. The kids have been playing pretty much non stop since then. They break to sleep, eat and change or shower. They have also gone out to enjoy the snow here.
Christmas day was wonderful. It snowed almost all day and was beautiful to sit inside a warm cozy house and watch the huge white flakes come down. Thankfully the power stayed on. We all loved having a very white Christmas!
Since then we have been pretty lazy around here. We did a little shopping on Friday. Other than that, we've just sat around and played games and visited. It's been wonderful.
I had great success with my Friday shopping. I was out looking for ONE thing. Sweaters. Sounds funny, I know. Here's the short version. I have always hated our stockings and hate looking a them every year, but don't really want to buy new ones, because our family is not complete yet and I didn't want to get new ones, then not be able to match it when we have a new addition. So I have suffered with the hated ones. Well I happened to find a pattern for stockings made from old sweaters. I loved them! So I thought if I found some cheap sweaters I liked, I could get an extra one for a boy and girl, just in case. But buying sweaters isn't cheap either. Since this is the cheapest time to buy sweaters I knew this was my only chance to be able to afford them before next Christmas. And since I'm not the fastest seamstress, it may take me a year to finish all of them. So we set out, sorta hoping to find something that would work, that I could get 9 matching patterns and colors. And that I could afford. After looking at what I thought was every sweater in the store, I was realizing it was going to be harder than I thought. But then I saw a sweater hanging all by itself that looked perfect, the right color green, the right pattern etc. We examine it and determined it would work even better than I thought. We could actually make 2 stockings from each sweater by just using the sleeves, which meant very little sewing or cutting. So we searched the store for the rest of that type and found just enough to make 9. The girls will all be cream, the boys green then everyone will have red trim and different toe and heel material. I was so excited. It should be fun making these and even more exciting hanging them up next year!!

Tonight we went to a surprise party for my cousin Julie who just finished her MBA in Education Administration. We are so proud of her. It was fun hanging out with lots of family.
Well, I think the next few days will be more of the same. Not much going on. Thomas is going home tomorrow after church. I think the kids and I will stay for a few more days so we can play with Brooke and Austin, since they were with their Dad this year.
We wish everyone a wonderful and safe New Year. We are very blessed to have such a wonderful family and wonderful friends. We love each of you and are thankful for your part in our lives.