Getting into the Christmas Spirit

I changed my background setting hoping that a green background might make this page look a little more festive. I am in complete denial that Christmas is NEXT week...still have my cards waiting to be addressed, presents to buy, pictures to take of the girls by the tree, take a drive to Irvine Park to look at lights-not sure how I plan to get all this done considering that I work all day everyday until Christmas and Joe works this weekend...hmmm, I think I put this off a wee bit longer than I should have.

BUT last night the girls and I went to a friends house for a Christmas party. I have a group of friends from work and we have little "mommy and me" get togethers...between all of us we have 13 children! Last night each child exchanged a gift, all the kids loved their gifts and it was so much fun to watch them all play. A little chaotic, but lots of fun. The picture is just a snap shot of most of the moms and kids while the presents were being unwrapped. We all sang Jingle Bells before opening the gifts and Katey really liked that. It brought back some memories for me.

As a child when I celebrated Christmas with the Niekamps in Ohio, my Grandma and Grandpa Niekamp always had us sing Christmas songs before we were allowed to start opening gifts. That is a really fond memory for me, so it made me smile last night while we were singing to remember those times. I am sure the Niekamps still do this at the annual Christmas Eve gathering and I hope the great grandkids enjoy those songs as much as I did.

Hopefully my next post will be few great pictures of Katey and Makenna by our Christmas tree. Our tree this year is fantastic! We finally have a "normal" tree, it is still fake mind you, but it is more normal in size and less Charlie Brownish than the one that we used the past 5 years. Putting the tree up was fun, but we had to do it in a few stages...tree one night, lights and ornaments the next. Katey was a good little helper and so far has been great about keeping her hands off the tree! I can't wait to put some gifts under there and watch her open gifts from Santa. Santa is one of my favorite people right now. Everything Katey asks for all I have to do is say "well you better ask Santa"...and that is it, no more begging, she just says "okay". Now if I could just do something about all those darn toy commercials they put on this time of year...