Christmas Tour 2006- Part 2

A few more photos from our Christmas Tour 2006:

1. Jacob and Jenna ready for Christmas Eve church
2. The Covey/Baxter clan on Christmas day at our house
3. Our family
4. Jacob and his new microscope set from Grandpa and Grandma C.
5. Jenna watching the gift opening festivities
6. Megan (Chris' cousin) and Jenna
7. Chris and Jacob
8. Grandma Baxter and Jacob playing Christmas piano duets

Christmas Tour 2006 - Part 1

Every year we make several stops on our Christmas tour to visit all our family. Sometimes we put in lots of miles on our tour, sometimes we get to stay closer to home. This year we didn't have to travel too far...but all our Christmas get togethers were crammed into 3 consecutive days. Maybe some year we'll get t-shirts made up like a rock concert tour. This year our shirts would say:
12.23.06 Huron, OH Davis Family Christmas
12.24.06 Pandora, OH Lehman Family Christmas
12.24.06 Van Wert, OH Christmas Eve church
12.25.06 Van Wert, OH Covey Family Christmas
12.25.06 Van Wert, OH Baxter/Covey Family Christmas

Below are photos from our first two tour stops . Check back for photos from the last three stops on our tour.
Photo 1: Jacob, Rylee (my cousin Kara's daughter) and Jenna
Photo 2: Jenna opening her Easy Bake Oven from Great Grandma Davis....she knew what it was right away and is saying "EEEEasy Bake Oven"
Photo 3: Davis family cousins (minus Brenda and Jill) - Kara, Lori, Lisa, Jessica, me, Kyle
Photo 4: "Chia Pet" Chris....doesn't it look like he has a green plant growing out of his head? I'm sure he'll love me for sharing this photo, but it makes me laugh (and I'm usually extra careful not to have distracting objects in the background...OOOPS!)
Photo 5: (the only photo from stop #2 on our tour...I was too busy eating and visiting to take photos!!!!) Grandma Lehman opening her gifts

Christmas Morning

I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas! Our Christmas was great. For the first time in a long, long time we were able to spend Christmas morning at home and take our time opening gifts and playing with them. Dad and Mom D. were here too. We went to 11:00pm Christmas Eve service and didn't get home until after midnight, so I told the kids that they couldn't wake anyone else up until 8:00am. Jacob came into our room exactly at 8:00 and woke us up and then went to wake up Jenna and Grandma and Grandpa. Santa was good to all of us! Jacob's favorite gift was his PS2 from Santa and Jenna's was her American Girl doll from Santa. Chris got me a "baby" digital camera (just a regular point and shoot digital camera) so I don't have to take my good camera everywhere with me. He also got me an awesome camera bag that will hold my camera, all my lenses, my flash, and other accessories. We got him an iPod and some accessories to go with it.

I have lots of photos from our other Christmas get togethers that I will share in the next few days...so check back! :)

Letter to Santa

It's 9:30pm on Christmas Eve. I have been running around like crazy trying to get things done for tomorrow. Jacob just came in and handed me a letter he wrote to Santa. He did it all on his own - no prompting from anyone. I know it's hard to read...so here is what it says:


12-24-06/Christmas Eve Happy Holidays!!!!!!

Dear Santa,
I recently found out what Christmas is all about. It isn't just about presents, but about family, kindness, and care. I found out that giving feels better than receiving. I hope you enjoy the cookies and milk. There are carrots for each of your reindeer. Please tell the reindeer, the elves, and Mrs. Clause hi for me.

Merry Christmas Santa!
I love you!!!!
I believe in you!!!!
Ho, Ho, Ho!!

Lots of Love,
Jacob

WOW! What can I say?? I have a great kid!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

Just a few photos of our Christmas trees (yes, plural). We actually have 5:

-our big one in the family room with ornaments Chris and I have collected throughout our lives
-a snowman tree with all my snowman ornaments
-a crismon (symbols of Christ) tree in our living room - Grandma B made all the Crismon ornaments and we decorated the tree in white/gold to match the ornaments
-Jacob's tree in his room decorated with all his ornaments
-Jenna's tree in her room


PS Can you see me in the picture of the big red ornament? If you look closely you can see me taking the photo. :)

DONE!!

I'm done....and I don't have to go back to school for 12 more days. YAHOO!!! This was a VERY long week...and I'm so glad it's over. The next couple days are pretty busy...basketball game tonite, Christmas with the Davis' extended family in Huron tomorrow, Christmas with the Lehman's in Pandora on Sunday, and Christmas with the Covey's/Baxter's/Mom and Dad D. here on Monday....but then I have NOTHING scheduled. That means a little over a week of relaxing and hanging out at home. I can't wait!

Oh - and a little side note...I have TWO photo sessions scheduled during Christmas break. The most exciting part is that one is with a total stranger - someone that saw photos I had done of her neice and she wanted me to do some of her 6 month old son. So far I've only done photos for family and friends. My goal for 2007 is to take my photography to "the next level" and hopefully have a few more photo sessions....this is definitely a good way to start.

Off to the basketball game (GO COUGARS) and then home to get food ready to take to Huron tomorrow.

Tis the season to be baking.....

I love to bake, especially at Christmas. It must be an inherited trait. Grandma L always makes goodies at Christmas (caramels and divinity are her specialty) and my Mom always made goodies, too. In fact that was usually our gift to our teacher every year. Each year I go through recipes trying to decide what goodies I will make. Then I stock up on all the ingredients and start baking. When I mention how much I have to get done before Christmas, most people think I'm crazy to still try to work in the baking...but to me it's relaxing and of course I always feel better after sampling the dough!

This year in addition to the usual goodies, I bought a kit to make a gingerbread house. I was so impressed - everything came in the kit (prebaked house pieces, icing, candy, etc) and all we had to do was put it together. I assembled the house and Jacob and Jenna helped decorate (although I did add icing icicles along the roofline of the house!). They had a ball...and it turned out to be pretty cute. It's now decorating our kitchen counter and they love showing it off to visitors.

The stockings were hung....

I have always wanted a fireplace with a mantle to decorate at Christmas time. I was so excited when I saw the fireplace and mantle in our house when we were first looking at it...it was just waiting for me to decorate it at Christmas! Unfortunately the fireplace isn't really working correctly (apparently smoke backs up into the house), so I fill it with greenery and candles instead. My favorite part of the fireplace decorations is definitley our stockings. I ordered them for Jenna's first Christmas and love the way they look against our white fireplace. Digging into my stocking is one of my favorite Christmas morning traditions. We still have stockings at my parents house...and my mom still fills them. I remember always getting an orange in the toe of the stocking. Sometimes we would walk by our stockings and notice a little bump in the stocking - an early treat from Mom! For several years she gave us "12 days of Christmas" gifts for the 12 days leading up to Christmas - just little things in our stockings each day. It was always fun to keep checking and see what would be inside each day! The first year we were married I informed Chris that he HAD to fill my stocking, and he has every year since. He never lets me down when it comes to stocking stuffers and he wraps every single thing...even the pack of gum! It always makes me smile to dump out the contents and see what I got!

Christmas Cards

I heard that today was supposed to be the buseiest day of the holiday season at the post office ...and guess who had a package to mail?? I actually went 5 minutes before it opened and stood in line so I wouldn't have to battle the lines later in the day. In honor of the busiest mailing day, my post today is about Christmas cards.

I've mentioned before that I love getting mail - regular US Post Office mail and emails - so receiving Christmas cards is lots of fun for me. I love going to the mailbox each day and looking to see who we got cards from. I love getting photos and letters in the cards, especially from long distance family and friends. We also send a lot of cards at Christmas. I spend lots of time every year picking the perfect card, taking the perfect photo to include with our card, narrowing down the list of who we are sending cards to, and composing our annual family letter. By now most of you have gotten our card with this year's official Christmas photo (which is one of my favorite photos to date of Jacob and Jenna). I thought I'd include a few out takes from our Chrsitmas card photo session. Oh - and just for the record - I did not prompt them to do any of this...they just started hugging and dancing on their own....so I just kept shooting pictures.




















PS Only 7 days until Christmas!

Christmas Music

I had this great idea to post one thing a day for the 12 days of Christmas. Well...it is now only 8 days until Christmas, so I guess I'll do 8 days of Christmas instead. My plan was to share some of my favorite things about Christmas, complete with photos - of course! So...today I'll start with Christmas music.
I absolutely love Christmas music. I probably have 15-20 Christmas CDs and can't wait to start playing them every year. I take them out on Thanksgiving night and start listening to them the next day. It's all I listen to in the car, at school, and at home. I love all kinds of Christmas music and add to my collection every year. This year my addition was James Taylor's new Christmas CD . I love it! I also bought a $9.99 CD at WalMart today called of Christmas piano music and have been listening to it all night - very relaxing and Christmasy.

I also love listening to live Christmas music. Today Jacob entertained our family twice with Christmas songs. This morning, he and I played 2 Christmas songs at church together. He was fine, but I was a nervous wreck. It's been a LONG time since I played in front of people. It went pretty well though and he was really excited that I played with him. This afternoon he had a concert for the Van Wert Area Boy's Choir. This is his first year involved in the Boy's Choir and he really enjoys it. They sang at least 15 songs - all memorized - and did a great job. I'm really glad he has inherited the love for music that Chris and I both have.

Presenting......

Due to popular demand, I created Chris the dancing elf. ENJOY!! (He's going to kill me!)

Chris the dancing elf

Dancing Elves

This is truly one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. Jenna and I played with it for a long time and laughed and laughed! Click on the link below to see Jacob the dancing elf.

Jacob the dancing elf

The Sisters

This is the last of the Thanksgiving photos. Brenda and Jill both had me take photos of them by themselves. I love how they turned out - especially the close ups of both of them (even though Jill was extremely uncomfortable in that pose! It's not easy to pose like that when you're 5 months pregnant!).

Brenda, Carsyn, and Payton

More photos from my Thanksgiving morning photo adventures. Don't you just love their matching sweaters, hats, and mittens? I think they look like little elves!! I couldn't bring myself to change these to black and white...they just wouldn't look the same without the COLOR!

Jill and Luke

Here are more photos from Thanksgiving week. Brenda, Jill, Carsyn, Payton, Luke and I (along with Dad) headed to a neat little park in Stow on Thanksgiving morning to take some photos. I absolutely loved the location and can't wait to go back and take photos there again.

Luke is one of my toughest subjects. He doesn't really like getting his picture taken. He's not uncooperative...but he makes you work for the picture! We had seen deer tracks in the mud and I ended up getting him to look at the camera by telling him to look behind me for deer....and it worked. He may not have the biggest smile, but his dark brown expressive eyes make up for it.

swings..and slides...and rock walls...OH MY!

I'm finally getting around to posting more of my photos from Thanksgiving week. YIKES - basketball season is officially underway and things are busy, busy, busy at our house!

I love these photos of the kids playing at the park. Grandpa and Great Grandma took Jacob, Jenna, Carsyn, and Luke to the park to play the day before Thanksgiving. Grandma stayed home to get things done while Payton napped and I took Brenda and Jill to Archiver's (fun scrapbook store) for the first time. We were so fortunate to have warm weather so the kids could get outside and play!!