We had wonderful fellowship, delicious food, lots of conversation, games and laughter. It is so fun for our children to be around other adopted children and for us to share the trials and joys of being adoptive families.
Hannah got this great art and play set from one of the cousins. There are paints, markers, stickers, paperdolls and stamps and they all have to do with Disney Princesses.
Rachel worked on making some beaded necklaces.
Gabe put together his Lego set.
Bess purused the internet in hopes of finding good deals and to spend the gift certificates she received.
We all spent time outdoors today, hauling firewood, filling birdfeeders, sledding and playing on the very large ice patch in the neighbors field.
I opened my new sewing machine and worked through the set up instructions. I think I am going to love working with this machine. :-)
And of course, there was plenty of play on the Wii for everyone. I love the bowling.
Abbie and Dan
Emily and Hannah
Julia, Bessie and Mariah
Here is the whole group...all 20 of us. Mom and Dad's living room seems so much smaller these days.
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas too!
We open the stockings first. There are always fun goodies to be discovered.
In years past, we have taken each of the children to the dollar store to buy for each other. This year they drew names. This worked out much better as we allowed them to spend a certain amount and each child got a nicer gift from a sibling.
The only thing Hannah told us she wanted was a Fairy Barbie. She was so excited to find it under the tree.
Dan just liked opening the presents. I'm not sure he even looked at most of them until he was done. When he finally took time to look over his gifts, he especially liked the chunky action figures. These are great toys for him as they are just his size and almost indestructible.
My big gift was a new sewing machine. I actually knew about the machine last week as Brian did not want to get it without me picking it out. I did not use it for my tablecloth project and he wrapped it up and put it under the tree. I can't wait to use it. I have had my old machine for 20 years. It has been a good machine, but I was so happy to finally upgrade.
Here we are enjoying our gifts and relaxing. Each person looked over their gifts a bit more carefully. Not sure we will find the floor for a while.
After all the gifts were opened, Brian and I told the kids there was one more gift in the closet. We downplayed the whole thing. We had Bessie and Gabe open it and they were totally floored that it was a Wii. We had talked to them before Christmas about taking some of the allotted money for Christmas and buying a Wii, but that would mean fewer gifts. After a lot of discussion and coming to the conclusion that maybe the Little's wouldn't enjoy it as much as the bigger folks and wouldn't understand the trade off of the cost, it was decided not to get one.
This has turned out to be a wonderful gift for the whole family. We have been having such a great time. The Wii is a very active participatory game, no sitting on the couch working your thumbs with this game.
I cut the tablecloth into eight squares, evened them up and straightened the edges.
Sew, sew, sew! There was yards and yards of fabric to work with.
Here is the fabric I chose. One good thing about procrastinating waiting so long is the fabric was on sale.
And here is the finished project. We have eight nice sized squares. I think I will use each square for the next eight years and then start over in the first square with a different color embroidery floss as there is plenty of room. That will give us 16 years of family signatures.
I had so much fun working on this project. I haven't done a lot of sewing in quite a while and have been wanting to do more. This was a relatively easy project to work on.
De'Etta, thanks for the wonderful idea to add to our family traditions.
My boys and their Papa
Once the lights and beads are on, everyone can begin hanging the ornaments. We try to keep some order, but with seven people working around the tree it can get a bit crazy.
Dan puts all his ornaments very close together. He is so cute and took great care in finding just the right branch to put his ornaments on.
Gabe is a more experienced tree trimmer. He spaces his ornaments out and makes sure there are no drooping branches.
Some of Bessie's ornaments are very fragile and quite lovely. She makes sure to place them higher up, out of harms way. She has also figured out that putting the glass ornaments closer to a light makes for more sparkle.
We couldn't remember who put the star on last year, so I put all the children's names on slips of paper and Brian drew one out. Gabe won the honors. (I just checked the blog and Bessie put the star on last year.) I'll need to make sure one of the Little's gets a turn next year.
This tree is smaller than last year's, but I think it came out very nice.
I enjoy decorating the tree each year, pulling out the ornaments and remembering where they came from and who might have given it to us. We have very old ornaments that came from my Grandmother and also a box of pretty glass ones from Brian's mom. There is the Little bunny that Sue cross-stitched for us and the star made out of Popsicle sticks with the picture of Meredith when she was maybe 5 or 6. She is 19 now. We have airplanes and lobster traps, a bird nest and a glass candy cane, Darth Vader and Hello Kitty.
I know many people have gorgeous theme trees, where everything goes together and all the colors match. Our tree is very eclectic but so full of memories and much joy. Each type of tree has its merit, but for now, with our house full of children, I guess we'll keep our mix-matched tree.
We try very hard to "pay it forward" by passing on things that we are no longer using or need to other families. It is a terrific circle of being blessed and blessing others.
