Merry Christmas !!

We would like to wish all our friends and family a Very Merry Christmas! May God bless your family this season as much as he has blessed ours.

Love, Melissa & Mike & Anne Marie

More Christmas Activities...

Well, it's been another busy week picking out activities to do from our Christmas jar! Wednesday of this week we had a "Christmas around the World" celebration at our Church. They highlight different countries each year that the Church has done some type of mission-work in - or had families in our Church visit for some reason. It was fun to look at all the pictures that were taken in other counties -- as one country was Guatemala -- a friend of ours did that station -- they brought their adopted daughter home the same month we brought Anne Marie home. Costa Rica was another country highlighted. Our adoption ministry helped the mission team gather items to take to the children of that country -- and it was wonderful to see faces of the children we helped. Santa also made a quick visit to Church on Wednesday to talk to all the kids about what REALLY makes Christmas special, and that Jesus is the real reason he comes around to visit them. It was sweet -- and each child was able to get their picture taken with Santa. We don't have pictures to post as they have not developed them yet, but trust me when I say that Anne Marie was giving Santa the evil eye in her picture -- and it will be FUNNY when we do get them -- I'll post it then!!

December 10th - We read the REAL story of Christmas & lit our nativity candle
December 11th - We had "Christmas-Tree-French-Toast" for dinner
December 12th - Church Christmas around the World celebration
December 13th - Visit to Grandma & Grandpa w/ special Christmas card
December 14th - Made Jesus a Birthday card
December 15th - Bought our Angle-Tree gift (no pictures - but we picked a boy- 8 years old -and bought him an outfit)
December 16th - Made a Christmas craft


Reading our story by our tree & lighting the nativity candle (With kitty Elizabeth looking on). We showed her Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus (She got the names a little "muddled" but she can point each one out)

Christmas Tree French Toast -- This was a fun dinner!! Anne Marie LOVED it!!

Visiting Grandma & Grandpa w/ our "special cards". Anne Marie is playing w/ Grandpa's glasses -- TOO funny!!


Anne Marie coloring Jesus a birthday card.

Anne Marie putting stickers on her snowflake & her snowman. We hung both of them in the front window of the living room! She's very proud of them. Every once-in-a-while she'll walk in there & say "Mommy, see" and point to the window!

Another Week of "Activities"...

We have gotten another week closer to Christmas! WOW-- how time flies! We are still doing daily activities based on our jar-drawing. This was a FUN week!!

December 5th - We picked out an ornament for Anne Marie's tree
December 6th - We made a special visit w/ our handmade Christmas Card to Nana (my mom)
December 7th - We decorated our front porch
December 8th - We bought the "furry kids" treats for their stocking from Anne Marie (We didn't get pictures of our shopping trip -but we got some "natural dried cat fish flake treats" (they smell as awful as they sound!!!) And a cat-nip pillow!!
December 9th - TOO SAD!! This was our Church choir concert -- but Anne Marie and I were feeling nasty -- we've come down w/ some kind of cold/cough -- UGH!! But we've rested today, and hope to start our week of activities over again tomorrow!!!

What a perfect day it was to get our ornament -- it was snowing (very little) and we actually found a Noah's Ark ornament!! Perfect for the year 2007!!!

A visit to Nana's house w/ our special made card & our family Christmas picture! We stayed for lunch & had a lovely day w/ her!!

Oh what FUN!! We decorated the front of our house. Not much, but we put out lighted garland, a wreath, a stocking on the door, and Anne Marie's favorite --- the "Noah" door-mat!! She just LOVES the decorations, now matter how small!!

Spotting Noah!! (Right @ our doorstep!)

A friend of mine has finally taught me how to load a video on my blog -- (she had a really really sweet one of her daughter singing a song to the sound of music on her blog & I made her teach me how to put one on ours!!)

So now, I just had to share this one of Anne Marie showing us "Noah" on our doorstep!!

23 Days Of Christmas...

Ok here was our idea about making a special tradition for our family:

We've decided that instead of a "regular" advent calendar we'd create our own.

I recently read on another blog that they created ideas to do each day, wrote them on paper, place them in a jar and pull one out each day to celebrate getting one day closer to Christmas. A few days during the month are already "pre-scheduled" like our Church choir concert, our town Christmas Parade, a local town's Birth of Jesus live reenactment (with animals and all!!) Other than these specifically dated activities each day will have a special activity that will be picked out of the jar by Anne Marie.

We've decided to do 23 days because our Christmas Eve and Christmas day are sooooo very busy and full of already created traditions that we want to keep - so we are doing 23 "activities" to chose from starting 12/1 ending 12/23.


So far this is what we've done:


1st -Went to our town's local Christmas parade!


We invited good friends of ours to join us @ the parade.

Both Family's braving the *COLD* to see the parade!


Finally happy to see the parade start & see "Noah"!

2nd - Created Anne Marie's Grandparents special Christmas Cards


Special Christmas cards for the Grandparents. (But of course we can't show them, just in case one of them sees the blog before we get a chance to deliver them!! But I can tell you they are a cute piece of "art-work"!)


3rd - Bought our first quart of Egg-Nog & watch a Christmas Show

Our EggNog - YUM! We had it while we watched a Christmas show. As you can see we gave her VERY little -- but let me tell you, she almost licked the glass clean!!

4th - Make Christmas Cookies

Ready to make cookies!! Also, having too much fun putting sprinkles on!!

Enjoying our cookies after lunch (even Daddy shared with us today, because he was able to come home for lunch!! YEA!!)

We've already drawn for tomorrow and we're going to get our ornament for the year! I'm excited about this one! I think we're going to buy an ornament that will go on our tree that we've planned on putting downstairs .. our tree upstairs is almost full and I'm ready to create some great memories with a new tree with Anne Marie!!

Oh Christmas Tree - Oh Christmas Tree & Noah??

The weekend after Thanksgiving we put up our Christmas tree. Ever since our 3rd Christmas (after our real tree fell over & broke ornaments) we have been putting up an artificial tree. As a child we always LOVED going out & picking our tree from a tree farm, and part of me misses the thought of doing that with Anne Marie. We did decide however to start a new tradition with her. We've called it "The 23 days before Christmas". (I'll post pictures & more on that later).

Anne Marie putting her "special lady-bug" ornament on the tree that we bought her last year.

We are just SO excited about this "1st Family Christmas". We let Anne Marie help with the ornaments (the lower ones of course). She just loves all the Christmas decorations. Every time we go into Target and look at all the lights, ornaments, and animated figures she says "Wow!". It's just so cute!!



Our Christmas tree is very "organized" -- don't worry, we have also bought an artificial-pre-lit-colored-light-tree for all those fun-kid-friendly-ornaments for next Christmas that can be put in the family room in the basement (we're still working on it, so we'll have to wait for next year to celebrate in the basement). Anyway, our tree has glass ornaments in green and pink with Angles and Santa's on it. We were talking to her about Santa and when we showed her one of the ornaments and asked her who it was she said "NOAH!" We just laughed and realized that she thinks that Santa looks like her grey beard-grey haired Noah from her little people Noah's Ark. Now, every time we're in town and see anything with Santa on it she says "Noah"! So funny -- we're going to HAVE to get that on video so we have record of this for the future!!