Christmas Cheer

I’ve no clue who these kids are, but I saw this photo this week and it keeps me smiling. :) It sort of describes my finals week-trying to have a joyful heart, but with much difficulty.

Oh, but the week was fine. I actually didn’t really start studying until Tuesday afternoon (and my first exam was Monday). I’m still waiting to hear back about the damage I did on the grades, but I think I did about as well as I could, given the circumstances. I had four finals-one of them was at 7:30 Friday morning (yes, I woke up in time to take it) and another was the very last final of the week from 3-5 in the afternoon. I managed to maintain my sanity through it all so that is the important part.

Now I’m home for a month-through January 21st! Friday night I went to a cookie bake and card making evening with the single sisters and we had a very enjoyable time there.

Saturday, while Jonathan and Justin were still in bed (they woke up at 12:45), Billy was working, Travis and Mom were in Burlington at his game, and Dad was making deliveries, Jesse and I made sugar cookies! He had been dying to make these things, so he was elated to hear the news that now we could finally do the baking.

Jesse the cookie baker

Justin pretends to help me with the dishes.

Saturday evening was our family Christmas shopping night, so we all made the early trek to Burlington to eat supper at Uncle Ronnie’s (that’s the name of the restaurant; I don’t think we have an Uncle Ronnie) and then went to the mall, Target, Walmart, and Staples. Everyone had drawn someone else’s name, so we were shopping for each other-it’s always rather challenging to keep things a surprise! Mom just had to steal our coats to cover things up.

Our exciting acquisition of the evening was Mom and Dad’s Christmas gift-a new camera! Our current camera is actually mine, but everyone uses it. So now we have a camera that actually sort of takes decent pictures and I get my camera back! We already have it opened and in use. More pictures were taken tonight than since August. Not that we’ve taken many pictures since August, but still. Of course, I think they’re going to wrap up the empty box and open it on Christmas just to make it seem official!

"The New Toy"
Place any said gift in Dad's hands and you will have yourself a very common Christmastime scene: everyone surrounds him as he tries out the new said gift.

When we got home, all the kids frosted cookies. It was a great time of interactive family togetherness… for about 15 minutes.

Jonathan

Jesse & Justin

At that point, people seemed to find better things to do and I was left with about three more dozen cookies to frost on my own.

And to do the dishes and clean up the mess…

And then Mom put the cookies away so she deserves credit too. Mom deserves a lot of credit for a lot of things so I don’t want to undermine the significance of her service.

We had some fun taking photos so please enjoy this rare occurrence of graphics!

Travis

Jesse

Jonathan took this picture, deemed it a work of art, and proudly named it "The Unfinished Cookie." 

Can you tell which one Jesse decorated??

In summary, it was a long Saturday full of thoughts of Christmas. I am exhausted. But I see it is actually Sunday morning now, so that could explain some things!

Have a blessed day!