Merry Christmas!!!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. The weather here was absolutely wonderful for Christmas. I woke up to a light dusting of snow all over the ground which made it truly feel like Christmas. Growing up in NY, there was almost always snow on the ground on Christmas but here in TN it hardly ever snows in December. In fact, our winter weather comes more towards the end of January and February. The snow here made my Christmas feel like a true Christmas.

A couple days before Christmas time, I decide to sit down and try and put together some extra Christmas cards using the scraps from Close to My Hearts Mistletoe papers. Of course, anytime Mama is in her scrap room, all the kids come running. My two oldest kids love to scrapbook with me and thought is would be fun to make their own cards. They had helped a lot with the cards for the car dealership last week so they were ready to go on their own. Here is a picture of some of the cards that we were able to make. We had so much fun until the wee hours of the night but that's what doing life together is all about, right. :)

This one here is my favorite, I think.....

The picture doesn't show the detail very well, but at the top around the flowers, we took prisma glitter and outlined the flowers. The effect was beautiful!

Once Christmas came the kids were thrilled. Bruiser, worried that he might have been on the naughty list but then figured that there have always been presents under the tree before so there should be now too. I wasn't so sure though :). He wasn't so sure either when there were several presents for the other kids and only a few for him. However, don't feel sorry for him, his presents just happened to be bigger and more expensive than the rest which means he got them last :). The end result - he was a happy boy!

Whiz Kid was thrilled with his new drums, Mama was o.k. with them too because they came with head phones so I don't have to hear them all the time.
Princess was our most excited child at Christmas this year, as her long awaited dreams of having her own camera, finally came true! Her screams were silent at first as nothing would come out, and then she finally found her voice and used it until the rest of us had to quiet her down.
Tinker Bell, well she loves everything. Although there wasn't a main gift that she wanted, all her many little gifts sure kept her tickled. I bought her a doctors kit like the one that I had when I was growing up and she was thrilled. Needless to say, everyone had their checkup before the day was through. and though some were told that it didn't look good so a shot was needed, we all should make it. :)

As our kids are getting older, we are trying to really teach them the true meaning of Christmas -giving! God gave us his son to save us and be our redeemer, we give presents at Christmas in honor of Jesus. This year, Whiz Kid and Princess, each with their own money, went out and bought everyone gifts for Christmas. They were both so excited to give their gifts and wanted their presents to be the first given out. It was fun to see them so excited to give rather than receive and the joy that comes from it. I hope and pray your Christmas was filled with joy and love as ours was.