I've watched "White Christmas" - the season can begin

Let's pretend the previous post was yesterday's.  There.  That was a good post yesterday, huh?

The gifts are all wrapped and under the tree.  Last year I faked it and just threw many gifts in bags.  If a gift was actually wrapped all I did was stick a bow on the front and call it good.  This year I decided that all the gifts should be tied with ribbon and the ribbon should then be curled and cut.  It took me probably a total of 6 hours to do, but I'm happy with the result.  Part of the anticipation is unwrapping the gift.  If it just takes one second flat to do it then what's the fun in that?

I feel like my Christmas tree could use more "oomph" at the top.  I'll have to see about that next year.  Maybe.  I really am not someone who needs to way overdo everything when it comes to decorating.  I enjoy it, but I don't shop for my home very often (or ever).  I think everyone has something that they feel pretty crazy to spend money on and, for me, that's home decor.  I'd rather have a new shirt or, better yet, buy clothes for Millie.

Speaking of decor and Millie, I bought her a stocking.  It's a technicality, really.  We aren't ever here at our house for the holidays so I don't know that her stocking will even be used except for looks.  I forgot to get one for her last year so I bought her a really sweet heirloom needlepoint stocking from L.L. Bean just a couple of weeks ago.

And just for the fun of it, here's her First Christmas ornament from last year.  I love it.

I love looking at photos of the babies from a year or more ago.  I can't believe how much they've changed in what seems like a short amount of time.  Here they are on 11/29/09 (l to r:  Kate, Anna, Amelia):

 And here they are on 11/27/10 (in the same order, only Caleb [6] and Ben [4 months - my sister, Carrie's, 3rd] are sandwiched between them:

How time flies!  The girls are starting to play with each other more and getting into the territorial phase.  Amelia is the youngest - she's almost 18 months.  Anna is the oldest of the girls at 20 months and Kate is 19 months.

I think that does it for me tonight. 

Happy Wednesday!

Screaming Santa Photo

It strikes me as odd that I finally have the time to blog 4 days before Christmas. 

My business keeps me very busy.  I make bows in every spare slot I have available and even those are precious few.  It's still going very well, although I closed my Etsy shop - right now I only sell my wares via my Facebook fan page.  I got a little tired of Etsy's fees and how long it took to create each listing.  My hope is that I will be able to have my own website relatively soon.  We'll see!

Amelia's doing great.  She's at the age where she repeats (or tries to repeat) what we say.  We took her to see Santa a couple of weeks ago, and because I'm such an awesome mom I was kind of hoping we'd get the obligatory screaming child Santa photo.  She sure seemed on her way to making that wish a reality.  She clung to me as tightly as she could - her little arms wrapped around my neck and her fingers digging into my back.  She even managed to wrap her legs completely around me in an attempt to interlock them when I tried to give her to Santa.  Santa just sat there, probably hoping we'd give up and walk away.  I managed to free myself and put my close-to-a-meltdown 17-month-old daughter on Santa's lap.  She was not havin' it.  But then the photographer produced a Goofy stuffed animal and waved it in Amelia's face.  This is what we got:

Thanks a lot, Goofy.  Here's hoping next year I get my screaming child photo.

(I really do love this photo)