December Daily 2009 - Day Twenty Six

Christmas No. 4

After a late night of traveling we woke up in Springfield and celebrated Christmas with Dave's mom family. We started the morning with stocking stuffers and then had the traditional pancake breakfast. Dave's Grandfather started making silver dollar pancakes many years ago and now David carries on the tradition. Yum, Yum. After breakfast we did a gift exchange with the adults where we drew names. I got a gift certificate to Archivers (I see some crop time coming up even though I swore the place off).

Christmas No. 5

Later in the day we celebrated our last Christmas for the season with Dave's family and then just hung out the rest of the day. After the kids went to bed we watched the movie Hangover, which was really really funny.

December Daily 2009 - Day Twenty Five

Merry Christmas!

Christmas No. 2

Santa came to our house this morning and brought Ashley her Dora the Explorer toys. What a nice and relaxing morning and day. We laid around in our P.J.'s all morning playing with all of Ashley's new toys.

Christmas No. 3

We headed back to Illinois to celebrate Christmas with my Dad's side of the family. Ashley is the only little kid, none of my cousins have kids yet, so she made out like a bandit. She opened present after present and loved all of them. We ended the night with a alcohol steal from your neighbor game with all the adults. I ended up with a six back of Boulevard Wheat (yum!)

December Daily 2009 - Day Twenty Four

Christmas No. 1

We spent Christmas Eve at my parents house with my moms side of the family. It was great to see my cousin Clare her husband Todd and their son Jack. Clare and I are months apart in age and always had a great time together growing up. Ashley and Jack had a great time playing together and sharing all of their new presents.

December Daily 2009 - Day Twenty Three

My Christmas vacation started today, our babysitter has off from now until after the new year. Ashley and I stayed home and caught up on laundry and cleaning, sounds like lots of fun! We also threaded cranberries and popcorn for the birds. We plan on taking our garland to my parents, they have a ton more birds than us. Trinity patrols our yard and runs them all off. After Ashley went to bed I FINISHED all my wrapping... I AM DONE! Yeah, now I can sit back and enjoy the holiday.

Signing off until after Christmas. I hope you all have a Merry and Bright Christmas!

December Daily 2009 - Day Twenty Two

Nothing exciting today... just a typical day right before Christmas. I finished up my craft and wrapped some more presents.

I also gave my favorite gift of the season to our babysitter. It was a captured heart necklace from Lisa Leonard Designs. It had all four of her kids names stamped and she really seemed to like it.

December Daily 2009 - Day Twenty One

Ashley's preschool Christmas program was this morning and the Ashley did great. Here she is walking in with her teacher... Big Smiles!
They all stood up on the altar and belted out about 10 songs (Jingle Bells, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Deck the Halls) and there was no crying. Ashley has been practicing the songs for the past month and it was great to see her perform. I was soooo proud of her!

December Daily 2009 - Day Twenty

Weaver House Christmas Party

Dave's parents had a friends and family Christmas party at the Weaver house. The Weaver house is the oldest home in Ozark, MO (I think built in the 1800's, I'll check with Dave on that). Dave's mom used to have an antique store there and then rented it to the City for their offices, but recently it has been empty. She just finished remodel it (painting, refinishing the floors, etc.) and it looks awesome. It was a fun time we got to see a lot of Springfield people that we don't get to see often and Ashley loved running around and playing with Cody and Regan.

December Daily 2009 - Day Nineteen

Silver Dollar City Wedding

This weekend we traveled to Springfield/Branson, MO for the wedding of Chad and Whitney Smith. Chad and David grew up together and have been friends every since. They got married in the Wilderness Chapel at Silver Dollar City. The wedding was small and very lovely, oh and really cold too! I don't recommend a dress, nylons and heels on an open air tram.

After the wedding we celebrated at the Branson Landing. We started the night at Waxy O' Sheas's Irish Pub where the couple had their first dance to a great Irish band. Then we moved onto Ernie Biggs Piano Bar where we got our own private room and got to embarrass the newlyweds on stage. It was a great time and I payed for it on Sunday with a headache.

Congrats to the Smiths!

Check out Ann's blog for more pictures!

December Daily 2009 - Day Eighteen

Atlas Christmas Party

No photos, but who really wants to see the inside of a smoky bar. It was a nice party and a chance to socialize with the shop guys. All my babysitting options were busy today so Ashley got to come along. Everyone was happy to see her and once she warmed up she had a blast. My boss Terry played a modified game of pool with her and Grandma Annette took her over to the magician and he pulled lots of money from her ears and there were lots of shy smiles to the guys.

December Daily 2009 - Day Seventeen

Santa visit!

We drove thru Santa's Magical Kingdom to see all the lights. Ashley really seemed to love it, pointing at everything and lots of oohs and ahhs. In the middle of the park we made a stop to see Santa. Ashley talked to him and gave her very short list of Dora the Explorer. We also got the yearly Santa photo. This year she actually sat on Santa's lap and smiled for a picture.

December Daily 2009 - Day Sixteen

Tonight I started wrapping gifts. I always dread wrapping all the gifts, but it seems that once I get started I get into it and enjoy it a little. I am not a matchy matchy or theme wrapper, kinda like my tree, I use all kinds of paper, bows, etc. I would guess that I have at least 15 different rolls in my stash right now. I got a good part done but still got a ways to go.

I will add a picture later.

December Daily 2009 - Day Fifteen

Today Ashley was the "Special Helper" at preschool. She got to take a snack to share with all her classmates and gets to be line leader and lots of other fun stuff. I love that her bulletin board is filling up with Christmas projects she has done at school. Don't you just love the blue colored Santa.

December Daily 2009 - Day Fourteen

New Ornaments

Is your Christmas tree all matchy matchy, a theme or just a little of everything? Our tree is a little of everything. I like to purchase ornaments of all the places we have been for souvenirs. I love unwrapping all my ornaments each year and reliving memories. Here our two new ones this year... a sailboat from our summer vacation to Michigan and one from the Lincoln Museum in Springfield (sorry for the poor photo, it was dark and I don't have mack photo skills)

December Daily 2009 - Day Thirteen

Crafting

Every year I make something crafty for my family and friends as a Christmas gift. I have been doing this for some time now. I have made painted light up glass blocks, snowmen candle holders, paper ornaments, snowflake ornaments and lots more. I was working on my project this afternoon and Ashley wanted to help. So I set her up with her own craft project, I plan to use her handmade ornaments as tags on all our gifts this year. She loved it. At three she already loves my scrapbook area and is always wanting to make pictures for her friends. I now keep a separate box of my scraps so she has her own stash to work with. I guess she is going to get my love of paper and glue.

December Daily 2009 - Day Twelve

Another no photo day... this is why I don't think I could commit to a paper and glue album. Lots to do this time of year to get ready for Christmas. We finished all most all of our Christmas shopping this weekend, YEAH!! I also finished a scrapbook album that I made for a gift, I will take photos and share after Christmas.

December Daily 2009 - Day Eleven

No photo for today.... but we had Ashley's Christmas photos taken today. You can try this link to see them. My niece Kaitlin was also there... we tried... I mean really tried to get a shot of the two girls for Grandma. Kaitlin is just like Ashley was at almost two and is a wiggly worm to the extreme, so we weren't very successful. I think we ended up with one head shot that is decent. We did get lots of great shots of Ashley by herself, look for them as Christmas gifts.

Hope to get my Christmas shopping almost finished this weekend. So how is your shopping going? Done three weeks ago, still working on it or not even started?

December Daily 2009 - Day Ten

Christmas Party

After work today I attended my first Christmas Party of many. It was a work party for Bi-State Fabricators an organization of local fabricators . Sounds fun doesn't it. In actuality steel people are generally pretty easy going and drinkers... well at least everyone who shows up to party is. It was a fun time. It was held at Greenbriar Country Club in Kirkwood, which was decorated beautifully for the holidays. Sorry for the bad photo but it was taken with my phone in a somewhat dark room after a couple of beers.

December Daily 2009 - Day Nine

We got our first Christmas card in the mail today. I love it! Such a great tradition! Love photos too it is great seeing how families grow from year to year. Now I just need to get my act together and get a photo so I can get our cards in the mail.

Also getting lots and lots of boxes from the UPS man, he is hating me this year. I have bought a majority of my gifts online this year. It is soooo much easier to price compare and get exactly what I want without actually leaving my couch. You should try it!

Photo coming later (I am blogging at work shhh... and my camera is at home).

ETA: I just realized my photo had our address so I am withholding the photo, but you can imagine what a pile of mail looks like.

December Daily 2009 - Day Eight

Work, work work.

Not very festive but a sign of the times. I have been busy busy busy submitting bids trying to sell something so my shop guys will have work next year. I worked well into the morning on a take-off for a project due tomorrow.

Atlas has been very lucky all year but now our backlog is dwindling and the jobs are getting harder to sell and therefore my job has gotten harder. So if you know anybody that needs a structural steel building... I'm the girl!

December Daily 2009 - Day Seven

Elf on the Shelf

Meet "Abby" our Elf on a Shelf. We stated this tradition this year and Ashley seems to be loving it. Abby flies to Santa each night to report on how good Ashley is being and sometimes how bad, then each morning he is somewhere new in our house to keep watch. He doesn't talk but you can talk to him and we can't touch him or he will lose his magic. Ashley is really amazed how he flies around and really seems to check herself because the elf is watching.

December Daily 2009 - Day Six

The Feast of St. Nick

Today Ashley got to open her St. Nicholas gift (from G&G Wrigley). Did you know that St. Nicholas is how the gift giving and stocking stuffing tradition started? And it is on December 6th NOT December 25th.

Not sure if my family does this tradition since we are Catholic or because of our strong German ancestry. Every St. Nick's Eve I put out my shoes so that St. Nick could fill them, usually with candy. As I got older we just celebrated the holiday with stocking stuffer gifts.

December Daily 2009 - Day Five

This morning we went to Lowe's for their Build and Grow workshop. Ashley and David put together a gingerbread house. If you have never done this workshop or the one Home Depot does, you should, they have kits that kids can build and it is all free. Great PR.

Today is also Trinity's 6th birthday. I can't believe she is that old, she still has lots of energy and is a non stop swimmer when we are at the Lake. I was trying to get a picture of Ash and Trin and look at this funny shot I got.

Ashley loves her to death and I think Trinity might like her too (just a little).

December Daily 2009 - Day Four

We finished decorating the Christmas tree tonight. David and Ashley topped off the tree with the angel. I can remember every year as a child doing the same thing with my dad's help. Carrying on the traditions!

Our angel was David's Grandma and Grandpa Turners.

December Daily 2009 - Day Three

Back on track, day three on day three!!

The first Christmas decoration that Ashley asked for was..... Baby Jesus (and that was three weeks ago). So this past weekend I started decorating and I was sure to get out the Nativity for Ashley. It is a Fontanini Set that my mother-in-law bought for us and keeps adding too. They are a hard resin (not breakable) so I have always let Ashley play with them. She immediately brought in her step stool and started pretending with the characters. We are working on who all the characters are. She has played with it everyday since it has been up. Definitely warms the heart to see her appreciate it so much.

December Daily 2009 - Day Two

I didn't even make day two... see this is why I am trying this electronically and not the traditional scrapbook way. I would just have another unfinished project to add to my list (kind of like the St. Pat's album from two years ago I still have not finished). So here goes...

Every year before Christmas I make a hair appointment, so do allot of other people because it is always hard to get appointments this time of year. I made myself an appointment (for later this month) and today we got Ashley's hair trimmed up. Why is it that she sits there so nice and does a great job and if I try to style her hair it is like trying to wrangle a greased pig? Now that we have the hair checked off the list we need to work on Christmas photos!

The happy girl after her haircut and style.

Modeling the cute style. My baby girls hair is up! How did this happen? At her first birthday see still had peach fuzz.... they grow so fast.

December Daily 2009 - Day One

I love the idea of a December Daily album ala Ali Edwards... but in reality I just don't think I could pull it off. I have followed Ali's albums at least the last two years and would love to document my Decembers like her. So I am going to do a December Daily ala Jenn. I am going to blog the content I would like to document, just like an scrapbook but electronic. So if I can do it electronically this year, maybe next year I will try it the old paper and glue way. To add another twist I took Jessica Sprague's free Holiday in Hand class and will probably incorporate that into my posts too. Sooooo here goes.

Day One
The first day of December makes me always think of an Advent Calendar. I can remember doing one every year growing up. We had the same one each year, it was a trifold cardboard winter scene that stood up with little numbered doors, there was a holiday picture behind each door. I can still remember the excitement of getting to open a new door each day. I can even remember my best friend growing up Kim's advent calendar. Her mom hand made it, it was a cloth hanging with numbered pockets and handmade ornaments in each. Every day you got to hang a new ornament on the tree above it, with the angel being last.

Fast forward some 30 years and I get to start the tradition with Ashley. Last year we painted a mailbox that I put a small treat in everyday. This year I bought a Playmobil advent calendar. I think she is really going to love it, she is already asking about opening a door tomorrow. Apparently Dave had no idea what an Advent Calendar was because I got home from work tonight and he was letting Ashley rip open doors, so she kind of knows what is coming. I got it all put back together and tried to explain hands off to both of my children.
I just love how her tongue is sticking out in this picture.