Slice of Heaven

Leah and her new stroller!

Well, Christmas is over and we have had one of our most relaxing and enjoyable Christmas holidays yet as a family! Dennis' office closes for the week between Christmas and New Year's, so it has been really nice to have him around and both of us have had a chance to get lots of little projects done and do some fun things together as a family. Not to mention the chance to sleep in almost every day last week! (The kids actually slept in most days as well...which is very unusual!)

Christmas Eve morning, we had our own little impromptu Nativity play with the kids. It was very fun... Mommy and Daddy were Mary and Joseph, Eric and Bay doubled as shepherds and wise men, and of course Leah was the angel, who appeared to the shepherds and said, "Baby Jesus", which means of course, "come see the baby who has been born!" It is fun now that they are all old enough to do something like this together, and I am sure it will get better each year! Christmas Eve morning, my brother, Andy, flew in to town, and that afternoon, we all went to the Christams Eve service at church together, including Dennis' mom. Our church has 5 services on Cmas Eve, and I accompanied 2 of them on the piano. We then all came home and let the kids open a present and then my brother read to them before bed. Christmas morning everyone came over to our house for the activities. Leah had a great surprise for her under the tree, a doll stroller...and she was very excited to see it! Dennis was already upstairs, I was still down, and as Leah climbed the stairs and saw her stroller under the tree, she called out, "Daddy! Daddy!" in her cute little voice! She was so excited that she then proceeded to call out to me, still downstairs, "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" It was a perfect moment of sheer joy that we will not forget :)

Anyways, after all the gifts were opened and everyone played with the kids for awhile, everyone left for the afternoon and we had a nice quiet afternoon before Christmas dinner together that evening.

Later on that week, our family and my parents and brother took a trip into D.C. We visited the Air & Space Museum, took the metro out to Bethesda for Dennis' celebratory graduation dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, visited the new WWII memorial (which is a beautiful memorial, and perfectly situtated on the mall) and then strolled through the National Christmas tree exhibits. It was a great day, the kids had a ball and everyone was completely wiped out from all of the walking by the time we got home late that night!

There are more pictures of everything if you follow our webshots link to the Christmas 2006 pictures.

A couple of the things we got accomplished the following week were:

I re-upholstered our living room couch, a project in the makings for about a year now! I originally was going to sew a slipcover, but my mom convinced me that re-upholstering would be much easier (not that it was at all easy!) I actually am 90% done with the project, currently waiting for 4 more yards of fabric to come in the mail as I calculated incorrectly and could not cover the back pillows. A separate post will follow later with details for those who are interested in my laborious project!

Dennis built a mantel shelf for over our gas stove! We actually realized we would like to have someplace to hang the stockings and so we quickly drew up plans for the mantel and he built it with time to spare on Christmas Eve! We are easily using up that black walnut from my dad's tree that fell 15 years ago!

Dennis made the next addition to our dining table, a bench for the kids to sit on instead of chairs! The bench is identical to the table, but in smaller scale. Eventually we will have chairs to match as well, but the bench is great for the kids and also for squeezing in a bunch of people when we have a crowd!

All in all we all agreed it was a great week, and as I write this, I am up early getting ready to start Eric back to school and routine again.