Home Again…well, almost…

The holidays are over and we are back to our new city home. It was so hard to leave this time and come back. We had a wonderful five days with our family and it was so good to sleep in our own bed for a couple of nights. I have felt like quite  the nomad the last several weeks.

Here is just a quick peak into our Christmas. We are having friends come and stay with us for New Year’s and I have lots of preparing to do. My best and oldest childhood friend married one of Jacob’s best friends 6 weeks after we married. Does it get any better than that? Holly and I had always hoped we would marry men that liked each other so we could spend time together and the Lord worked it out to where we married best friends. :)

Our first married Christmas  was wonderful. This was actually our third Christmas to spend together and each year it gets better.  We had our little Christmas, just the two of us, Christmas Eve morning. As usual, Jacob spoiled me completely rotten. He surprised me with a wide angle and a telephoto lens for my camera as well as lots of other things.

We spent Christmas Eve night with my parents and siblings and were there to watch the girls open their gifts the next morning. This year was a little different than most—usually the little people are up first and wake everyone up.This year however, we big people were up first and woke the girls up to open gifts.

Jacob loves to tell people about Christmas morning at my parents’ house. Unlike most families, we don’t take turns, opening our gifts one person  at a time. The night before we sort out all the gifts according to who they belong to. Christmas morning, when everyone is awake and in the livingroom, Daddy says “Go!” and the wrapping paper starts to fly. Jacob refers to it as chaos and having been an only child, had no idea what he was getting into with a Christmas for seven kids.

Of course, after close to 20 years of opening gifts this way, we have perfected our method and no gifts are lost :)

I made all the little girls fancy dresses for Christmas. Faith loved hers so much she didn’t want to take it off. Even at barely a year, she already loves “foofy” clothes and shoes. The other girls floated around in their dresses and had a fashion show for Daddy. I put invisible zippers in their dresses instead of buttons so they felt very grown up. My little sisters are so much fun to sew for.   

 

 

 

Our family grew by one this year. Meet Lulu:

One of my gifts from my in-laws was this lovely  dress form (already modeling a dress in the works for my Etsy shop)