Christmas at the Winds

Brown paper packages tied up with string!

Here we are getting all packed up to spend Christmas Eve Eve at my parents’.

Sweet cousins!  All those presents on the table are presents from the kids, mostly from the Awana store. 



Caleb got this amazing moving marble track that he built with no adult intervention. It’s pretty cool!

Josiah got an MP3 player and Jennifer got him the Sponge Bob soundtrack. (Her first cd was a Veggie Tales Sing-Along - ha!)

The night before our Christmas Eve morning was spent watching The Detectorists with my dad, which was just perfect because we got him a metal detector!  Can’t wait to search for buried treasure!

Heather gave Josiah a great game that involves catapulting little aliens into a drone, that then flies into the air. Such fun!  (We also gave my dad the lovely coyote-tail hat he is sporting in the picture!)

Lights

We drove around and looked at Christmas lights a few evenings, and one special night, we got to go to a living nativity with my mom and Heather. Eleonora dressed up for the occasion. 

It was so good!

The Habs’ house in all its glory. 

We also picked up the oldest three Hab kids to drive through our county’s light display. 

More Christmas Fun

Oops!  Got a little ahead of myself with the sickness post. Here are some more fun things that happened before that. Teaching in the age of Corona. Good times!  Haha. 

We ran into the cousins at the public library after school one day and they happened to be triplets!

Eleonora and Caleb made long lists of people to shop for at the Awana Christmas store. It was Josiah’s first year to be a worker instead of a shopper, but don’t worry, he filled a box with treasures to give away after the clubbers were done shopping. 

Jenn and I helped take care of the Sparkies. 

Josiah’s showing off his skillz with the vacuum cleaner, he even got the fringes vacuumed out flat. When the kids do something helpful that’s out of the ordinary, I sing “Josiah’s the hero of the day...”, or whoever it is, and they go wild. So funny!  They’ll do just about anything to hear that song. 

My parents gave us a lovely poinsettia, and it very quickly bit the dust!

We had a small, outdoor camp staff Christmas party at the CSBC fire circle. Eleonora is taking her turn at a little Christmas Pictionary. 

Aunt Terry chalked this terrific Christmas moose for my classroom, and my students made these adorable pet reindeer projects. 

Sick

If you’re going to be sick in bed for a week, I recommend having kids as swell as these to take care of you!  (I also recommend the CVS drive-thru for all your testing needs!)

Homemade chocolate chip cookie dough, the breakfast of champions!

Besides sandwiches, Josiah also made us a lasagna dinner one evening. 

If you’re having trouble making shapes out of chocolate chip cookie dough, just leave in the cutters. Ha!

Caleb made artichokes to go with our 15th anniversary dinner that was spent in quarantine. 

There’s some sort of sweet message hidden in the mustard, if only you can decipher it. 

Can you decode Eleonora’s sign she put on her door?

(STOP Germ-x)

Turkey Creek Shopping Spree

Our annual Turkey Creek Christmas shopping trip was much smaller this year, but Heather, Eleonora, and I still had a grand time!

The Chattanooga Zoo

Our library has a free Chattanooga Zoo pass good for two adults and four children that you can check out for free. Eleonora kept asking the librarians if it was in, and finally it was, so we rounded up two adults and four children for a fun and chilly afternoon at the zoo. 

O Christmas Tree!