That's a Wrap (on Christmas)

We made it up to Joe's family this weekend for our final Christmas celebration.  It was good to see everyone.

Grandma Karen got Hope a special bracelet that says "love you to the moon and back" which is something they say to each other all the time.

We still give gifts to Grandma/Mom, but the adults also have a white elephant gift exchange.  This is Karen opening up the bag of "goodies" Joe packed up in his gift.  There were some bars of soap to clean the bathroom, a jar of our homemade lotion, and he threw in a gift card too.  

Rick chose my box, which had a kids alphabet puzzle, a kids hanger, several old VHS movies, a Santa decoration, Q-tips (for some reason we have like 5 boxes of them around the house), some of Joe's travel brochures and I put in a few of my hand made greeting cards.

There were lots of other fun things exchanged too.  I got a box from Karen, which Hope was happy to get the beanie babies and the alarm clock.  LOL!

Taylor can't come with us up to Grandma Karen's because her neighborhood doesn't allow dogs, so she went to the doggie hotel.  We think she might have been cold, since she took her new toy from Grandma Karen and found a nice patch of sun to chew on it.

As I was looking through the pictures I found two more cute ones to share of Hope and Taylor in front of the tree.

Hope wanted to get Taylor a jacket for Christmas.  Not sure what she thinks of it.  

Yesterday we went and got my new phone that Joe got me for Christmas.  This morning Hope had a conversation with Suri.  It was cracking me up.

Well, I think that is a wrap on Christmas.  Here are a few more Christmas cards I made this year.

The first three I made for a magazine publication call.  The first two were not chosen, but the third one was.  I am sharing it now because the magazine it was going to be in went out of business and is not longer going to publish my project.  I will miss the magazine for inspiration.

Hope and I have another week off, so today on the agenda...movies and scrapbooking!  YEAH!

Have a great day!

Darla

More Christmas

Here is more Christmas updates...

The firetruck Santa came through the neighborhood again this year, but Hope didn't want to go down and see him.  I had already signaled that we were coming down, so Taylor and I walked down to meet him.

Last Sunday we hosted my family Christmas.  Just before everyone arrived, I walked in our bedroom to find that Taylor had dug out one of our house plants.  Naughty Dog!  I got it cleaned up and ironically enough, she followed Joe into the bedroom again later that night and got shut in there AND she dug out the plant a second time that day.  VERY Naughty Dog!  LOL!

Speaking of dogs...grandma Deloris made dog floor mats for all of the family dogs!  They all had dog themed fabric and were shaped like bones.  

After dinner, the adults were hanging out chatting and the kids were getting anxious to unwrap presents.  So Hope brought out a demand letter saying "We are ready to unwrap presents" and walked back into her room.  So we cleared the dinner table and were waiting for them to come out, so I slipped a note under the door telling them we were ready.  LOL!

Here are the girls playing with that "no mess" sand.  

Christmas Eve we let Hope unwrap a gift and Taylor got to unwrap one too.

And we made it to Christmas morning!  Hope had asked Santa for a stuffed Olaf (this was her second choice since Santa said she wasn't old enough for a phone).  She has been hanging out with Olaf all day yesterday and still today.

Santa also brought her the game TROUBLE.  Do you think he was trying to tell her something?

Taylor gave Hope the new Taylor Swift CD.

More Lego sets, which I think she was pretty excited about.

And a crystal growing kit.

Taylor playing with her new toy.  I am just glad it is big enough it can't roll under the couch.

Aren't these too cute?

Hope got me a UNI blanket and Joe got me a new i-phone 6, but I don't have it yet since he wanted to let me pick out the color, etc.  

Here are a several layouts of Christmas memories from the past...

This is the layout I created with all of Chippy's adventures from last Christmas.

Here is the journaling...

Last year Joe wrapped up several gag gifts for Hope to unwrap on Christmas Eve.  Since she was into Duck Dynasty, he made all the "from" tags from the stars of the show.

I was several years behind on Christmas layouts, so I finally pulled out all my Christmas papers and used up a lot of different lines I have had for YEARS on these next layouts (and the one above). 

This layout was a quick re-cap of events leading up to Christmas.  I didn't do a separate layout for all the elf pictures this year.

Christmas morning 2012.

This is a winter layout.

I had to document the Christmas Disaster, when our tree fell over.  Luckily it was the day after Christmas.

Here is the journaling.

We had some funny outtake photos while trying to get our family picture last year for our Christmas cards.  

As I mentioned in my last post, Christmas Eve servicing at our church is just amazing.  This is when all the candles are lit and we sing Silent Night.

Here was our fun leading up to Christmas last year.

Christmas morning last year.  Oh what fun!

Alright...that is enough for today.  Until next time!

Darla