And of course, we remember that our TRUE present is Jesus.?? The greatest gift of all.

The holiday parties have officially started.?? We had our little Christmas with the boys this morning and the Everett Family Christmas tonight.?? The only thing missing was a baby!?? This house really needs another baby.?? You know what is on my wishlist for 2008!?? We were going to have Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa this morning but we postponed it because Ty hasn’t been feeling well and it was iffy as to whether or not he would be well enough today.?? Turns out, he was so we’ll have yet another small Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa later.?? Tomorrow night we stay the night at??Papa and Sweetie’s so that I can help her make our traditional German krautnettle on Monday morning.?? (We had the typical American feast tonight with roast, turkey, ham, potatoes, candied yams, potato salad, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing, pickles, olives,??deviled eggs, rolls for Logans, fruit salad, romaine salad, chocolate pie, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, mckinley pie, cherry pie, Mint Ice??Cream Pie,??Buckeyes, Fudge, and Baby Ruth??Bars.?? Aunt Beck didn’t make me her famous cheese ball this year but I am working on forgiving her for that).?? Monday night we will have the Zimmermann Family Christmas and Tuesday we will have an Italian meal at our house with the Longo/Abbington family.?? Party party party.?? I know this seems excessive to some but since I was a little girl I have always had 4 to 6 Christmas parties (and that was WITHOUT any divorces LOL) so it is tradition.?? Brooke asked me tonight if I mind having our Christmas with the boys on a day other than Christmas day and really I could care less.?? It’s the time that matters to me not the calendar date.?? As Brooke pointed out, we have the date advantage because we don’t have to schedule for Santa since we don’t include him in the Brinkman festivities.?? My boys have not mentioned Santa once….so yet another year goes by without me having to address that one.??:)

Tomorrow is the Christmas play at church.?? Tanner and I argued round and round about this.?? He insisted he was NOT doing it and I insisted he WAS.?? I won but I guess that is still yet to be determined what kind of win it will be.?? He was chosen for the part of the donkey and I found that ironic under the circumstances LOL.?? I bought him a grey jogging outfit, made a black yarn tale, and made donkey ears which I put way too close together on the head band and for some reason they look more like bat ears.?? Oops.?? Still though, I was impressed with the fact that I got it all together with my new glue gun.?? Tanner is going to have a fit when I make him put this stuff on.?? We finally negotiated down to singing only (no actual speaking part) and he is threatening not to sing.?? Tonight at bedtime he included this line in his prayer “and let the play be done and let it be good”.?? Poor little buddy is clearly worrying about this.?? I’ll never forget the Christmas play were he stood perpendicular to the audience (and the rest of the children) refusing to face the crowd the ENTIRE time with a frown on his face.?? Funny.?? Last year, Zane and Graham broke out into a brawl in the middle of their song.?? Got that on video tape.?? You never know what may happen so one must come prepared with a charged video camera for these events.

I have a TON of Christmas pictures that I did of the boys but I want to play with them before posting.?? Maybe sometime next week I’ll get them posted.?? I thought it would be fun to attempt a little cartoon strip affect just for fun…so I guess the above are just Christmas teasers.?? 🙂

Hoping your Christmas celebrations are wonderful.??

JESUS is the reason.

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