It has been an eventful Christmas season here.  On December 23rd, I went to get a tooth pulled and it has been hurting ever since.  I am trying to deal with the pain by taking Darvocet and Advil but I am so sick of the pain surging through the left side of my mouth.  The good side to this is, since I could hardly eat the last few days, I have lost FOUR POUNDS!!!  LMSO

Christmas Eve we spent a nice quiet evening here at home and opened our presents.  It was just the three of us, and we had so much fun watching Noah open his presents and get excited over them.  He got some new jammies and a sweatshirt too!

Christmas Day I woke up a little early to fix appetizers and green bean casserole to take to my brother's house for lunch.  We had a wonderful lunch, opened some presents and then played a card game where you get to steal presents from others.  LMSO  It was hilarious.  My side of the family is hilarious and very loud!  While I was downstairs chatting with some of the women, Noah and Matthew were upstairs.  And this is where the first injury of the season came about.  Matthew was on the treadmill and Noah stuck his hand in it somehow.  Matthew came downstairs with Noah in his arms screaming.  It scraped the top of his hand some, but we were really concered with the inside of the pinky finger on the same hand.  There is a chunk of skin missing.

We ended up packing up then (after being there for about 3 hours) and took Noah home because we neeed to properly clean the wound and give him some Children's Tylenol and they didn't have any, and I didn't have any in his bag.  We cleaned the wound as well as he would let us, but you could tell he was in alot of pain, and we gave him some Tylenol.  He fell asleep in dad's arms while sitting in the big chair, and I fell asleep on the couch while they were napping.    (His hand is scabbed over now, and we put Neosporin on it and some huge bandaids, so we will keep an eye on it.  I think it looks worse than it is.  I thought at first it was broken...but thankfullyh only a flesh wound)

We went to Matthew's parent's house on the 26th.  We were both dreading it, because his sister from the DC area was in town and she can be a real pill at times to get along with, and well, we have always had some hard times getting along with his parents and other sister as well.  But we prayed about it and left it in God's hands, and everything went wonderful.  We had a great visit, laughed and talked, told stories, etc.  While Grandma and Noah were visiting in the kitchen, and the grown ups were in the living room though, Noah somehow got hit in the face, under the left eye, with the sharp edgeof a cabinet door.  He instantly had a small blue brise under his eye, and over the last two days it has become more visible and spread across the patch of skin under his eye.  I am so thankful he didn't get hit IN THE EYE.  So he looks like he has a mini black eye.  LOL Bless his heart!!!  But that one he complained about hurting for a whole minute while on my lap until someone started playing with one of his toys and he directly stopped crying and jumped down on the floor to go get his toy. LOL

Injuries, laughs, tears, paper and boxes stacked to the ceiling on the back porch....lol, leftovers, presents, wrapping paper and boxes in the trash, "does anyone have this size of batteries?", homemade fudge,  bowling on the wii, Christmas music, oh look at the lights!!!, but the most important was the friends and family we shared all of this with.

BTW, I gave the recipe scrapbook to my neice (the one who just got married in June of this year), and she LOVED IT.  She read the letter in the front and started reading the litle stories before each recipe and started to tear up.  She hugged me and told me several times how much it meant to her and how she loved it.  Her favorite part??? A page in the back where I enclosed several of my mom's (her grandmother's) hand written recipe cards.  My brother who normally doesn't pay much attention to stuff like this said it was an awesome book to be passed down to her children and so on and was so impresesd by my craftiness.  The problem??? I forgot to take pics before wrapping it up for her about 2 minutes before we left the house on Christmas Day.  LMSO  I was still putting the finishing touches on it until then.  So, I have asked her to take pics of each page for me and email them to me, so I can post them to show you all!

Now, I must admit, Megan, my neice got me back this year.  She made me cry with the present she got me as well.  Some of you may remember the story about the embroidered roses I cut from my mom's wedding dress after she died.  The dress was water damaged and in bad shape.  But the DILs and neices wanted a piece of the dress.  So in tears, I cut it up and I made sure Megan had a rose.  She told me she would tack it to her wedding dress on her wedding day and it would be like grandma was there with her on her important day.  Well, she followed through with this promise and on her wedding day when I saw it, I cried.  Heck, I cried all stinking day over her getting married.  LOL  Her present to Matthew and I for Christmas was a beautifully framed collage of photos, including one, that shows her lifting up her skirting in the front to show the rose from my mother's wedding dress.  Other pics were one of her Matthew, myself and Noah (in his tux), one of Noah in a tux, one of Meg by herself, etc.  As soon as I saw the one of her dress lifted up to show off the rose, I started to cry and hugged the picture!!!   My neice and I have always had a special bond, but it showed this Christmas as we both gave each other presents that tugged at our hearts.