Christmas time .... An Early Gift

Christmas is here in full swing at our house.  We've seen Santa twice ..... I think we are going to get to visit with him again tomorrow.  Some people are very definite with their lists here and repeat it like lines in a play.  Others {Addison} like to say a new item each and every time they are asked what they are hoping for, might be forgetfulness or might be a strategy.

Elfie is being "bad" according to the kids this year.  He has been doing all sorts of crazy things around the house like wrestling Woody with lots of on-lookers, a snowball fight with legos, building a snowman out of marshmallows, and today he's driving a tractor full of dolls around on the dining room table.

One day he drew on one of family photos.  I love the mohawk Aaron has here:

The girls and I made Christmas cookies.  I have been invited to my first cookie exchange and I wanted to try out a new recipe.  I am so excited about the cookie exchange.  I think it's such a fun thing, I almost didn't do it because I was afraid I was over-committing myself (like I always do) but I think it's going to be fine.

It snowed twice this week. The first time was just a little bit but the kids were so excited so we went outside and played for a while.  We made snowballs and even a pint sized snowman that Reese smashed before I got a photo.  Today there was about an inch or so of snow .... snowboots were needed as well as snowpants ..... we had to make a trip over to the big house to dig out one pair of boots and all the snowpants .... I found them all.  But Ethan took a pair of 3T snowpants to school when he really needs a 5 or 6 so I don't know what happened when he tried to put them on.  Tomorrow snowpants for Ethan are on the shopping list.

I usually sew quite a bit for Christmas for gifts but this year with most of my sewing supplies over at the other house the list is quite limited.  But I did make this new tree skirt for us.  I have a few more things to make but time is running out.
I've have 75% of my shopping done and most of that I did on the internet.  The only part of Christmas that I dislike is the shopping .... ugghhh.  I like everything else: the decorating, the food, the events, the celebrating, the excitement, .... the gifts of what to buy, where to find it, how much we've spent, the limited time I have to shop and my hate for shopping in general is the yucky part for me.  Of course without the gift what's the point of the tree with a big space underneath it or why would the kids be super excited?  Enough of my Grinching!

And then today I got an early gift.  It was a note from Ethan's special education teacher, Mrs. Collins.  She was reporting that Ethan had made significant gains in the areas they were working on.  Several weeks ago I had a report come home from school that wasn't so great and it looked like he was going backwards rather then maintaining or moving forward.  Today when I read the note, I cried.  He struggles so much, it's hard for him repeating kindergarten when his siblings are in 1st grade.  He has to work so much harder than the other students and still it's not always good.  He fights us at home to do work.  But today shows that slowly but surely he will make gains.  So the grinch is right:

"Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store.  Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a bit more."

I thanked Mrs. Collins for the early Christmas gift ..... Christmas comes once a year but we receive "gifts" all the time ... we just have to look for them.