Counting down

Artwork by Gabriel! And it was his idea to draw something!

Once school was out I could think about all of the things we had to do (in a weekend! our first celebration was on Xmas eve). My first priority on my first day off (the 22nd) was to write our Christmas letter. I had the pictures already, but didn't start composing until that day. It took a few hours since I'm rusty in InDesign, but we mailed most of them that day (except for the ones we could hand deliver by Christmas). It was fun to have Carmen and Gabriel's help in the assembly line.

I was thankful that we'd gotten the Christmas decorations out Thanksgiving weekend, because if we'd waited, we wouldn't have been able to pull it off! I was also thankful we had wrapped gifts weeks before.
Of course the kids were very excited about the holiday. Gabriel had this Santa countdown calendar, so Carmen made her own. If you can't read it, it says, "In God we trust with all our heart".


Random tangent:
Chrys, I just wanted to show you this since Oliver loves Chicka-Chicka Boom Boom so much. One weekend he had homework to find large letters for his name, and they made these at school. This was hanging up in the hall until it came home just before Xmas.