Girls, Gifts, Gingerbread and a Grateful Heart

I was pretty excited to be able to go for a girls night to make my very own gingerbread house.

You know how it is when you make them with your kids. You want so bad to help them make it look like a work of art instead of the graham cracker trailer house it ends up to be.

So it was so much fun to be creative, eat candy to my heart's content and laugh with friends.

It was also very nice of our host to have made, cut out and baked the gingerbread and made the frosting... it made the night quite relaxing for the rest of us.

This was my end product:

front

back and gazebo

This was supposed to be the pond that the sour patch kids were skating on but it looks like the ice wasn't quite frozen...

This just made me giggle.

So, I guess I have a better picture in my head of how my fantastic-all-by-myself-gingerbread-house would look...  but at least you can tell it's supposed to be a tree

I'm tellin' ya, I really think I look good in my self group shots... wait until you see the next one I tried...

Here is what my gingerbread house looked like the next morning:

I'm glad the kids enjoyed it

So, when you have 3 children who have special needs and are in special needs classrooms you end up with a lot of teachers, aids, and bus drivers. It's hard to come up with something creative and meaningful so that the people who are involved in your children's lives will know that they mean a lot to you. When you have 30 teachers total to give to, you want it to be meaningful and inexpensive...

So this year, I found these ornaments/sun catchers at the dollar store and thought that would be so cute for my kids to paint and give.

Brother worked so hard on his:

So did Sister:

They were so proud of themselves and so was I. But, I ended up not so proud of the dollar store... as soon as the paint dried it flaked up and fell off.

Aaargghh!

Back to the drawing board... I bought cornbread muffin mixes and called it a day.

The tags say, "I know it sounds CORNY, but Christmastime would have been NUFFIN without you!"

We had a well-deserved Sister's Day and made ornaments and had lunch. It was fun to see our 3 little girls together on the couch watching a movie.

Marc and I had the opportunity to have lunch with and catch up with some very dear friends of ours, Matt and Kandi. We haven't seen them since Baby was a baby (tee hee, that sounds funny). We hung out for hours talking and catching up and just enjoying the friendship we still have.

So here is that picture I told you to look forward to...

My teeth are so big that I couldn't even get them all into the picture.... Sheeeeessshhh!

Here's one that Monique took of just us adults... er, at least it was supposed to be just us adults... Brother...

And last but not least, certainly not least, we have been the very lucky recipients of gifts for the 12 Days of Christmas!

It has been SO MUCH FUN!! My kids are giddy with excitement every evening as the await the secret Santas door knock. Brother was so excited one night when he saw Santa sneak by the window and was very proud to yell out to Santa that he had been caught. (Ah, seriously, bless that kids heart)

Out of the many awesome gifts we have received for the 12 Days, socks have been the most favorite! But, they are not just any socks! They are Christmas snuggy socks and I had to talk Brother into taking them off after 3 days so that I could finally wash them!

I am so thankful for all this wonderful stuff that has been going on in our lives because behind the scenes there have been some life-changing trials for our family. It is things like what I have just posted about that truly lift our spirits and remind us of the true meaning of Christmas.

Thank you, if our secret Santa's happen to be reading this. You have added some true joy to our lives this month and we are grateful.

Thank you to our friends and family for making this Christmas Season a memorable and special one.

And we thank the Lord every moment for all of our blessings, even when we don't realize they are...