It's Christmas

Christmas has come and gone. The new year is approaching fast. My holiday was different this year. But still blessed as ever.

One of my most favorite parts of the holiday is our Christmas Eve service at church. It was beautiful.

We spent Christmas Eve dinner with my grandparents, uncle, aunt, and cousins. Christmas Eve night always means lots of family jokes, presents, food, games, and getting home late. It's a blast!

On Christmas morning we all woke up around 7:00 (which is early for me folks) and headed downstairs to see what Santa had left us. And boy was it a sight. People, over my two days of Christmas, I've never seen so much Doctor Who merchandise...and it's now all found its home in my very own bedroom. *happy dance*

After all our presents were unwrapped and we'd all made a thorough mess, we got ready for our day. This year we hosted a big Christmas day brunch and invited multiple families from our church and home school group. Our house was packed! This was my absolute favorite part of Christmas this year. Serving these people, my friends, on Christmas Day...what a huge blessing!

{Photo credit goes to my dad.}

it's about time

Gah. I've become such a terrible blogger. I believe an update is in order.

School is out. Thank you Lord! I don't think I've ever wanted a break so badly in my life. The past week in a half I've pretty much been a slug. Other than work, I've done nothing productive. Absolutely nothing. (Well...unless you count reading and watching tons of Netflix.) It's amazing.

I watched The Hobbit. It was absolutely fantastic. I haven't read the book. Actually, I haven't read anything relating to The Lord of the Rings. But I'm a die hard fan of the movies. And The Hobbit definitely lived up to The Lord of the Rings awesomeness.

With there being a lovely break from school, I made myself a list of things to do.
     1) Start guitar lessons. My sister who is amazing agreed to teach me. So far I know the A chord and the Em chord. We aren't real far along in our lessons, but we're getting there. Exciting!

     2) Read Les Misérables. I probably won't finish it during winter break. It's 1,463 pages. O_o But my goal is to finish before the new movie leaves theaters. I've been watching the trailer over and over. Gosh, it looks fabulous.

    3) Spend lots of time with this dear girl.

So far, Bethany and I have had a sleep over, watched lots of Doctor Who, and got our hair cut together. On Sunday we're eating out at Pizza Hut and exchanging Christmas gifts. Can't wait!

Christmas is in three days. THREE. And I don't even have all my shopping done. I'm such a slacker. I plan on finishing up this afternoon though. Hopefully. And wrapping everything. Hopefully.

Downton Abbey season three comes out on DVD on January 29th. And I'm #4 in the hold list at the library. Eek! Excited!

Well...that's all from me. How about you? How is your winter break going?

We Wish You a Merry Christmas

"We wish you a merry Christmas.  We wish you a merry Christmas.  We wish you a merry Christmas, and a happy New Year."

I hope everybody had a fabulous Christmas!  I know I did...and I wanted to share it with you all. :)

Before I get started, I must warn you, this has the makings of a very long post with a lot of pictures. ;)  There, you are officially warned.

On Christmas Eve we went to our church's Christmas Eve service and then headed to our grandparent's house.  We do this every year. ;)  At my grandparent's we eat yummy food and then open presents.  We start out opening our gifts one at a time so we can all see what everybody else gets.  But, usually, our excited-ness kinda grows because of the mound of wrapped presents sitting in front of us and the organization disappears.  Haha!  It's so much fun! ;)

Here's some pictures from Christmas Eve:

 

All six of us grandkids.

Goofy picture! ;)

I just had to post this.  Hahaha!  My brother is seriously a goof-ball.  100% ;)

My family <3

So, that was Christmas Eve. :)  It was awesome!


Now, onto Christmas Day.  Guess what!  You'll never believe it!  My dreams came true!  We had a white Christmas for the first time in six years!  Here's some pictures: 

Isn't it so pretty?!

On Christmas Day, we woke up at 8 o'clock on the dot, because Mom said we couldn't get up any earlier. ;) Haha!  Which was fine with me...my little brother ended up getting me up.


First, we sang "Happy Birthday" to Jesus.

And then we opened our stockings. :)  We have 10 stockings.  Six, for all of us (Dad, Mom, me, Zach, Annie, and Logan) and then three for the dogs (Nickel, Nellie Mae, and Nyle) and, last but not least, one for our fishies. ;)  If you look in the picture, mine is the really long one.  Haha!  I hadn't emptied it yet.

After we went through our stockings we went on in to the living room and opened our presents!

As you can see, we're all like half asleep. ;)

Nyle is in the middle of it all.  Hehe :)

Then we called up my family and they came over and we had a big Christmas feast!

A big 'ol stack of yummy waffles!  Mmm!

Hehe ;)  Can't forget the chocolate!

I also thought I'd share some of the things I got for Christmas. :)  What did you get?

iPod dock!

Some really cute boots!

I love these movies!

My favorite perfume :)

This amazing hat that I received from my BFFE (best friend for eternity), Kaela. <3

Some clothes!

So, that's what I received. :)  Among other things like:

• Point of Grace Christmas CD
• Hobo gloves
• Warm Vanilla Sugar lotion and body wash
• A head band
• jewelry
• Lots of money ;)

I wore this bow on my shirt all day. lol 

All six of us on Christmas day. :)

I hope you had a great Christmas!!  Feel free to comment and tell me about it.

P.S. Oh!  One last thing!  Happy Anniversary to my amazing parents!  They've been married 19 years today. :)

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas

"I'm dreaming of a white Christmas.  With every Christmas card I write.  May your days be merry and bright.  And may all your Christmases be white."


Where I live it is pretty rare to have snow on Christmas day.  The last time that happened was...a very long time ago. ;)  But, nobody says we can't dream, right?


We got our first "sticky" (it actually stuck to the ground) snow a couple days ago.  It was about 3 inches.  Nothing huge.  But still pretty. :)


Anyway...enough talk...I wanted to show you some pictures. ;)

This last one is a picture of our foot prints. ;)  All four of us.  Me, Annie, Zach, and Logan.

Is anybody else totally in love with picnik's new Winterize effect?
Have you had a snow fall yet? :-)

Oh Christmas Tree

"Oh Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree, thy leaves are so unchanging..."

So, sadly, we had to break tweak our Christmas tree tradition. The place we get our Christmas tree apparently closes early on Thanksgiving Day...so we had to wait 'til the day after Thanksgiving.

Logan: "Why can't we go to the woods and cut down our own tree?"

Annie: "We don't have an ax."

Me: "We don't have a woods."

So, we did the next best thing and went down the street to the Kroger store. ;)  Here's some pictures of us getting our tree and decorating...

Here's us, with our beautiful real tree. :)

Decorating...

So, we have a little tradition in our house.  Ya know how everybody wants to put up the star?  'Cause it goes on top and is 'important'? lol  Well, we take turns.  Every year is somebody else's turn.  And we go in birth order.  This year was Zachary's turn.  (Also...another little tradition.  Dad has always picked us up.  Haha!)

Last year was my turn.  Here's me putting up the star. :)

We're done!  Our tree may not be the 'prettiest' but it's made up of years of memories.  From home made crafts to funny ornaments we picked out as kids.  I love it!

I have one amazing family.  Just sayin'. ;)  (And yes, I'm on my brother's back. lol)

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Snow Angel

I have a story for ya! ;)

It was very early on a snowy January morning. We're out and about, all 6 of us...it was still dark...about 5 AM to be exact. Paper route. :)

We were close to finishing up. On one of the last streets. And Logan wants to get out and help. So he runs around with Zach, tossing papers. Then suddenly he flops himself down in someone's driveway and does a snow angel. We're all like, "Get up Logan! Come on!", laughing at him!

About a week after that day we get a card in the mail from somebody on our route. Now this was not unusual. We had gotten tons of cards and tips in the mail from our people on our route. It was really neat...like Christmas every day! So we open this particular card and what do we find when we read it?

Dear Allen & Julie Lake,
I am an elderly lady (almost 70) and not in very good health.
I want to thank you for your good service in delivering my paper.
And also for the snow angel in my drive way early morning on Jan. 7th. :)

Neat huh?! It's amazing how the little things, that we think are so insignificant can mean so much to another person.

Merry CHRISTmas!

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! I did! :) I got about 5 CDs, a bunch of movies, some nice clothes, 2 books by my favorite author, and some money. Also, we do some special traditions every Christmas I'd like to tell ya'll about.

We always do something we call 'Pepperoni Blessings'. We usually order pizza and have it delivered to the house. Then we'll give the pizza man a gift and a tip. This year we did it a little different and went to Wendy's. There's this reallly nice hostess there that's super nice! So we gave her a gift and a gift card. Her co-workers were all crowded around her and her boss praised her like big time! It was a very neat experience!

On Christmas Eve we'll always go to my Grandparent's house and have our Christmas with them. We have snacks and open presents and play games! Very fun!

Then Christmas morning, the BIG day ;), we'll get up and see if Santa came! Of course, he always has! ;) lol We'll look in our stockings first, then we sing Happy Birthday to Jesus, and then open our gifts. After all the presents are opened and wrapping paper has littered the living room floor, Mom will put her apron on and cook a huge delicious brunch! My grandparent's, uncle, aunt, and 2 baby cousins will come to our house and eat.

Christmas night is special. We have a birthday party for Jesus. Each one of us have a special gift for Jesus. It's something that we either promise to start doing or promise to give up. And we have to stick with it. This year Momma had us all pick out what we thought was our spiritual gift and find out a way to give it back to Jesus. And that's how we end Christmas Day.

The next morning though we go on a big shopping spree! A chance for us to spend our Christmas money and gift cards. We usually, every year, "shop 'til we drop"! lol

So...all together I had a wonderful CHRISTmas! God bless!