Our Christmas

I thought I'd share some pictures of our Christmas...

At the beginning of December, an "Elf on the Shelf" arrived at our house. The book that came with him let us know that he was sent to our family from the North Pole. Each night he would fly back and report to Santa how the kids had been that day. He would then return to a different place in our house. Our responsibilities were to name him and never touch him. Pretty simple, really.

Meet our elf, Zephyr Zippy-Jet.He ended up in all kinds of places: the Christmas tree, stockings, the kids' closets, our car, kitchen cabinets, our nativity scene... he was all over the place! He went back to the North Pole on Christmas Eve. We will miss him until he comes back next year.

We had a lovely Christmas morning. It started with the ceremonial underwear toss. When Pat was little, he would get underwear or socks at Christmas. He'd toss it over his shoulder and move on with the next gift. For the past few years, the first presents we open are underwear or socks. And all together, we toss them over our shoulders. It's sort of our opening ceremony for Christmas morning.

The kids each had 3 simple wishes this year....

A bathrobe. To this day it only comes off when we make him take it off and get dressed!

Money! Went straight to his savings account. He is laser-beam focused on saving up for a laptop. He's been saving up for about 8 months now.

Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots! Brough knocked Dad's block off!!

A pink iPod!! She was so excited!! You can see her pink Snuggie in the background. That was wish #2.

Becca asked for pink pom poms, and couldn't understand why Santa brought red ones. She eventually decided the red ones would work.

Becca's nest...

How much do I love that he was excited and enthusiastic about getting a dictionary?!!??

Bubble wrap is AWESOME!!!!

There's more to report, but I've spent about 2 hours on this post (I have serious issues with blogger's formatting program!), and have lots to get done. I'll post more in a day or two. Until then, I'll leave you with this...

Hope you had a Merry and Blessed Christmas!

Cheers!!

Resolutions

It is time to get back to the blog. I have been sidetracked by FaceBook for a year now. As part of my resolutions for 2010, I plan to blog a few times each week.

As I was looking back on 2009 and thinking about 2010, something occurred to me: The blog is really the best way for me to chronicle what our family is up to. I'm just not a scrapbooker (although I have about 3 bags of stuff that I've set aside to fill the adorable and empty scrapbooks I bought for the kids when they were babies). The blog allows me to record the day to day "stuff" that happens in our lives.

2009 was a great year for our family. It was a pretty good year for me personally, but I feel like there were some areas that I really let go. As we all know, the start of a new year is a great time to start fresh. So... here are my resolutions for this year:

Blog at least 2 - 3 times a week. I only list this first, because I'm writing it here... on my blog. I set the limit of a couple of times a week so I don't end up spending 20 hours a week on blogging, instead of accomplishing my other goals!

Go to church regularly. We used to go every Sunday, but for a multitude of reasons, we've gotten pretty lax in our attendance. It's time to make church a priority again.

Take better care of my family and our home. I am not a good housekeeper. There, I said it. But I resolve to do better. I let myself get overwhelmed, distracted, etc. Our house is really cute and has so much potential, but I've never put the work into making it all it could be. This is the year!

Continue excercising. I am proud to say that I finally started working out regularly in September. I have been sick off and on for the last 2 months, so I haven't been working out like I should. But I really miss it and am looking forward to re-establishing that routine.

This is the year I'm going to make my calendar my best friend. I'm going to get myself organized and stay that way. I'm not saying I'll ever be a Type A SuperMom (nor do I think I'd really want to!) But, I'm going to stop just floating through life like I have been.