Winding Down...

Christmas has been wonderful this year, as usual - happy and crazy. Brooke, Ben and the babies have been here for 2 weeks and are heading out tomorrow, we will miss them terribly! Jeff & Vanessa were here for a few days and it was great to see them and everyone got to meet Vanessa (and the votes are in - everyone loves her). My entire sewing studio is covered with toys, books & games from Santa's visit - but I still managed to sew a few blocks together for my "scrappy around the world" quilt. We also had a baby shower for Miss Amanda:

It was very well attended and she is pretty much ready for the big event in a few short weeks.

Her sister-in-law made her this totally cool love-y taggy thing-y:

We all examined it very carefully and want to make some on the next family quilt night.

We've been to a few movies - always fun. Family Christmas Parties, BINGO night, Tamale Making, - oh yeah and most of us got the flu - blech!

Here is Mr. Handsome with the "big" grandkids, with our little scrawny tree in the background:

It went out the day after Christmas because I am the grinch. One more event tomorrow - Shane & Becca are blessing baby Brian - so one more party and then back to "normal" life - whatever that is. Hopefully after Brooke and her family get home safely we can get some snow around here - it is pretty dry and barren - very unusual, it was in the 50's yesterday! Of course, after reading the weather report, I decided to polish my toenails and wear sandals and short sleeves- I froze and had to add socks and a jacket for the movies. Apparently even though the 50's are quite warm for December in Utah - it still isn't quite toasty - go figure. Hope your holidays were wonderful!

Procrastination...

Brooke and her family have officially left Missouri this morning (at 3 a.m.!) and are coming this way! They will be to our house by Sunday, so, guess what I'm doing today? That's right, cleaning! So, why am I posting instead? (You really have to ask?)

We are going to have a houseful for Christmas, Jeff & Vanessa are coming and even my Mom is coming - that is a Christmas Miracle all by itself! (Dad is staying home with all of the dogs) I am so excited to see everyone and feel very, very blessed.

All of my shopping and wrapping is done and Mr. Handsome made himself VERY useful, as usual, and made our neighbor gifts:

Sugared Pecans - delicious! I made them cute with leftover charm pack squares. That is outside his area of expertise...

I have a whole pile of fun stuff to do with the "big" grandchildren when they get here. We haven't seen them in 6 months, which is WAY too long. We have lots of things on our list to do when they get here, you know, things like "Going to the Nicklecade and shooting the giant spiders", pillow wars with the uncles, dates with Grandpa, and all of those wonderful grandchildren things.

Well, I'm off to clean...

White Elephants...

We had a fun "White Elephant" gift exchange party last night. It made me reflect on the many years we've attended and had a great time at White Elephant parties over the years. I came home with these babies last night:

(yes, price tags still attached) Mr. Handsome got a fabulously ugly (women's) sweater and the funny thing is, that I don't even have it to take a picture of this morning, because 2 of our sons have figured out that they want to wear it to their work parties - they are having ugly sweater parties and they think that sweater is perfect! After they are done with it, I am going to felt it and make a cupcake pincushion, etc. with it. So - you can get some pretty fun stuff at these shindigs. We have so many fun memories of these parties - Doug bringing a live mouse in a hamster ball and wrapping it up - quite a surprise for my neice, who opened it. One year, Brooke bought a 1 pound box of See's candies and we all carefully opened it and took a bite of each candy, then she re-wrapped it and took it the party - it was a hotly contested item, but at the end, when the final recipient opened it up - we all laughed uproariously, they did not - such is the luck at the white elephant parties...