Still recouperating

...but we survived Christmas. Happily, one of our brothers-in-law made Christmas Dinner and my family came over to my in-law's house, so all we had to do was get there. We were all pretty beat from being at all 3 Christmas Eve services. During the 3rd service Younger Daughter leaned over and whispered, "it's boring to hear the same sermon 3 times!". On our way out the pastor congratulated us for completing "the Moravian Trifecta" :-)

We left the festivities quickly Christmas night when younger daughter presented with a sore throat and fever (it wasn't strep as feared). Then after we got home I was sure we were headed for the ER when Wilma accidentally ripped out one of The Husband's contacts with her paw (he's fine as well).

New Year's Eve was quiet - just hanging out at home with games and movies and favorite holiday snacks. And I was more than ready to have school start today! There was much less sniping and bickering in the house today!

In the days leading up to the Big Day I made dozens of bars of soap, 4 jars of sugar scrub, tub truffles and homemade pepperoni - plus labels for all of them. I neglected to photograph most of them, but here's the soap:
That's the lovely and nicely staged photo that The Boy took for me. Here's the one that I took:





Christmas cards are still not all out. At the 11th hour I ordered 1-hour photo cards from Walmart. About a dozen actually got mailed in time.... Every year I swear that I'll start things sooner and yet every year I don't. Maybe 2008 will be the year I get it together.... Miracles do happen!

We did finally get a Christmas tree the Saturday before Christmas (which was also Jenny's first day as a newlywed! love you, J!). We had to go to 4 tree farms to find one open - and unlike NJ nobody seems to sell cut trees from the Kmart parking lot. When we did find one we put the kids to work:





And a few Christmas Eve photos:
Bell Choir (Older Daughter on far left)


Blurry Jr. Choir photo
Younger Daughter 3rd from left



And a dark Christmas morning photo: