The Days Before Christmas

'Twas the days before Christmas, when all through the house

Every creature was stirring, though, I hope not a mouse;

The ornaments were decorated and painted with care,

In hopes that our tree would no longer be bare.

The children were hyper and jumping on beds,
While dad told them to stop, 'cuz they might bump their heads.

And now came the time for Elijah to nap,

But first we must find his coveted Titleist green cap.

When up in the living room there 'rose such a clatter,

I ran up the stairs to see what was the matter.

Away up the stairs, I don't fly like a flash,

I hardly can run the 100 yd. dash.

Madelyn was yelling, "I love the new snow,

let me go play in it, I want to, you know!"

When, what to Madelyn's eyes should appear,

Elijah's green hat, and just as I feared;

Our sweet little girl, so lively and quick,

grabbed the green hat, to play a mean trick.

I couldn't handle it, so quickly dad came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;

"Now Madelyn give back your brother's green hat."

Then came Elijah and on Madelyn he sat.

Dad said, "Off your sister, go sit by the wall,

Now give back the hat that was not nice at all."

As snow flakes that before the wild blizzard fly,

When they meet an obstacle, soar through the sky,

So up to her brother she grumbled and knew,

Just what it was that she had to do.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard with a sigh

"I'm sorry Elijah, what I did was not right."

As I stopped in my place, and was turning around,

They gave a great hug and then fell to the ground.

They were tickling and giggling from their heads to their feet,

And when it was all through they both took a seat.

"Out to the snow, get your coat on your back,"

I said to the kids while running the vac (vacuum)

Their eyes how they twinkled. Their dimples how merry.

Their cheeks were like roses, thier noses like cherries.

Their bodies were eager and ready to go

And make a big snowman out in the new snow.

We try to make snowballs, then they both grit their teeth (ugh)

"This snow is too fluffy" then she threw it at the wreath.

"Let's make a snow angel," I said with a beg,

"Lay down on your back, move your arms and your legs."

Elijah's was small like a right jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I heard him say, "That's not myself."
Madelyn's was perfect from her toes to her head.

Soon I decided it was time for bed.

They both were tired, playing in snow is hard work,

"Goodnight my angels," and they gave me a smirk.

Tucking them in and giving them kisses, you know

my babes are so precious, for too fast they do grow.

I thank God everyday for giving to me,

A beautiful, wonderful family

As I look at the stars God gave us, so bright,

I say,"MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOODNIGHT"

**I hope you all have a blessed Christmas season, we are very blessed to have each other and all of you our friends in our lives. We love all of you!

Side Note:

This is a conversation I had with Madelyn while baking cookies for her class.

Mom: "You have 17 kids in your class, we have 5 cookies on this sheet and 5 on this one, how many do we have all together?"

Madelyn: (without hesitation)"10"

Mom: "Right, so if you have 17 kids and we have 10 cookies, how many more do we need?"

Madelyn: (again, without hesitation) "7"

Mom: "How did you know that so fast"

Madelyn: "I'm good at my numbers, Mom"

I guess she put me in my place, and it is scary to think that she has her dad's brains, and is going to be smarter than me by the time she is 10.

Christmas Time is Drawing Near

I am realizing that I am terrible at this blog thing. I am not near as good at it as my dear friend Andrea :o) Andrea...I need to give a shout out to you, because it seems that you are incredibly organized and are awesome at writing your blogs, I love reading them. It is my dream to be as good as you!! ;o)

Anyway, we have had a lot of things happen since the last time I wrote. The picture up top is of my grandma and Madelyn during my family's yearly Christmas tradition, making tons of fattening, but yummy, cookies.

Madelyn loves to put sprinkles on all of the cookies, sometimes a few too many. My grandma is so sweet though, she would calmly say, "okay sweetie, I think that is enough sprinkles for that cookie," then she would take the pan over to the sink and sneakingly dust some of the sprinkles off, so not to hurt Madelyn's feelings (You can see in the picture above with my grandma, just how many sprinkles are on the cookie sheet :o)). Madelyn was also pretty sneaky when it came to 'eating' the sprinkles. (I am laughing as I write this, because I am just thinking of how many Madelyn germies are on the cookies that we have already eaten.) She would lick her fingers and dip them

in the sprinkles and eat them (it is no wonder she didn't want to take a nap, because she was on a sugar high). My soon to be favorite sister-in-law joined us in our venture for her first time. We kept her busy, because my sister and I were scheming up some cookies for her Bachelorette party later that night. I had told her how to dip the peanut butter balls in the chocolate, and all she needed to do was carry the HOT crockpot of chocolate over to the table. Okay, so I told her that it was HOT and not to carry it without pot holders. She gets a couple of pot holders and heads slowly over to the table with the mini crockpot. I guess I should have told her that the inside comes out, so don't just hold the handles, because the next sound I heard was a crash on the floor, an the poor thing was so worried about chocolate spilling all over the floor that she grabbed the pot without pot holders, OUCH! No chocolate was spilled, but Kyla had her first casualty while making cookies with us. Thanks for saving the chocolate Kyla! She ended up getting a blister on her finger, and unlucky for her we went bowling later that night, and it popped. What a great start to her night of freedom celebration, sorry Kyla.

Oh...about the cookies that my sister and I made, we had a lot of fun making 'male anatomy' cookies for Kyla, decorated in green with one eye and the others in pink with chocolate curlies at the bottom, it was a lot of fun!

You might be wondering what the 'guys' did while we were making cookies, well...if you know my family we are all golfers, so we sent them, including my mini man to Austad's virtual golf. My husband is an amazing golfer, and he came home and said that he basically wasted them all :o) I am sure that it is true, and Elijah is going to be a great golfer as well. He hit his little plastic club and plastic ball at the screen (my little left hander) and it registered him hitting the ball 30 yards. He also has a new Titleist hat that he has to wear everywhere! We headed out to church today, and he had to find his hat (we are going to have to start hiding it on Sundays). We fought tooth and nail to get that away from him, we finally convinced him that daddy wasn't wearing a hat, so he didn't need to either. He wears it to bed and has to wear it on top of his stocking hat when we go outside. (I will get some pics of this, so you can see what I mean especially for the extent of the obsession, but it is really cute).

As for me, I am just finishing up one of my Master's classes, and I got my 10 page paper written and mailed to my prof. I have been so busy doing, I don't know what, so I am sorry that my blogs are so long. I hope you all have a blessed Christmas season. We will be heading out to Washington state soon after Christmas for my brother's wedding. Wish us luck, I am standing up as well as my two kids (flower girl and ring bearer - Elijah calls himself the 'rainbow', boy, I hope he isn't crushed when he doesn't get to wear a rainbow costume :o) I am also making their wedding cake and helping with make-up for the girls. Ryan's grandma isn't doing well, and she hasn't been for a while, so we are hoping that she doesn't go to meet the Lord until we come back(how selfish does that sound, but I really don't think I could fly with 2 kids and do all this stuff without my wonderful husband). Have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year if I don't blog until then, you know why I am busy :o)

Time for bed, Goodnight