Christmas Blessings...

Life has been very busy. In addition to all the stress we have been dealing with. Blogging is just not at the top of my list of things to do. I apologize!

Christmas was chaotic.. Two days before Christmas some pretty mind boggling, unbloggable things happened. Just so totally unexpected. My mind was totally and completely consumed by the new events in our lives. So totally unbelievable. Some day I shall write a book about the ways God has worked in our lives.

But that same day, two days before Christmas, friends of our brought gifts and pjs for the kids.


The kids were very delighted by the blessings. 

Sisters..

Gluten Free Pizza from our friends.. 

Freezer meals from friends and their family...

On Christmas eve, my dear friend who understand how my brain works when I am on overload, brought us dinner and a gift she had helped the kids order. 

Every year this friend of mine helps my kids get a Christmas gift for me. This is the highlight of their Christmas. The gifts they buy for me. This year it was a beautiful charm bracelet and each kiddo got to chose a charm. This is probably one of the most precious gifts I have ever received! She also handmade the above plague for me. I am blessed by her friendship. 

The kids were so absolutely delighted with the stromboli and wings that she brought for dinner. 

They were thoroughly enjoyed by all!! 

I had planned a special family day for the Christmas Eve Day, but things went a lil crazy and we never got started until late afternoon.

This year instead of stockings we did a scavenger hunt. I made coupons and purchased several small gifts for the kids. 

Nail polish for the girls..

Matching pj pants for everyone.. 

We ended the scavenger hunt in the living room, where I had a Christmas movie ready and a surprise package from my sister..


I had no idea what was in the package.. much to our delight there were sodas, popcorn, hot chocolate and tea in the package. perfect for our movie!! 

                                
We enjoyed the movie then painted nails and played games! It was a fun and relaxing family night...

Ice Skating Adventures..

So we tried ice skating... 

We have a friend who's mom has a pond in the backyard. It is perfect because I can sit inside and watch the kids outside.

We arrived at their house around 4, no one was home. So we didn't trust getting on the pond even tho we had permission.

After some discussion and a quick phone call, we asked friends of friends if we could skate on their creek. They had not checked it since the rain, so no it wasn't safe yet. 

The kids were just so disappointed..

So we stopped at a farm a couple miles from our house, random people that usually have tons of kids on their pond. I gathered my courage and asked the farmer for permission. They gave permission and their boys joined our kids on the ice!

I had 5 kids settled on the ice..Lee refused to wear his new skates. David didn't have skates and wanted Elizabeth's skates. Elizabeth happily skated in her borrowed skates. Meanwhile Fayth crawled around on the ice in her new skates and refused to get on her feet.

We had prepared warm clothes for everyone, but Miss Nesiah was not happy that she had to sit out in the cold (wrapped in warm blanket). Less then ten minutes after getting the big kids on the ice, Nesiah started wailing. She does not cry often. But when she does, we listen.

So I drug the wheelchair and the screaming toddler across the field back to the van. Where much to the delight of 2 boys in the parking lot, I tackled getting two wailing kiddoes into the van!!


The 4 big kids were able to enjoy another 15 minutes on the ice while I calmed the littles in the van and warmed them up!


Tomorrow we shall try again.. without Abi. 

Tis The Season To Give

Christmastime...
We started off strong, with big ideas of what we wanted to do for the Holidays. We did a couple projects and had lots of fun. But somewhere in the last 2 weeks, I got to busy and had to many unbloggables to deal with and we lost our Holiday spirit. Christmas did not look like  I wanted it too. 

But we did a couple fun projects. 

We found this pinterest project that I thought would be simple, quick and fun. 

Pinterest and I do NOT MIX!!
We used modge podge and epsom salt to coat pint jars. The goal was to make them look like snow. Yea, we were highly unsuccessful. 

We did print these cute tags off pinterest that turned out nice. We laminated them, cut them out, punched holes then attached them to the pint jars.

The kids did 90% of this project and truly enjoyed it!

I made a homemade hot cocoa mix that we poured into the jars along with small marshmallows. 

The kids had a lot of fun making these and handing them out to bus drivers, teachers, therapists, and neighbors. 

We also fixed a surpise package to send to our far away cousins. The kids had so much fun, buying and wrapping up these gifts. We shipped it off with orders to be opened on Christmas Day! 

The kids had been begging to go Christmas Caroling. They really wanted to do that this year. I missed the homeschool group event.
One day in the middle of all our medical appointments, our sweet bus drivers did us a huge favor. So we decided to bake Christmas cookies especially for them. 

We had extra cookies, so the kiddoes asked if they could deliver some to our friends. A light bulb moment.. I had them take the cookies and sing for our neighbors! They had so much fun!!