Christmas morning at the DHQJR, 2011. good times.
We were so lucky this year, and someone did the twelve days of Christmas for us--the kids loved it. For the 12th day of Christmas we were given this awesome nativity, and here you see the littles setting it up. We were often putting the children to bed when they would come, so I'm afraid we always got the gift in the morning, so I hope whoever it was didn't stand out in the cold for too long waiting for us to get the door! Sometimes we didn't even hear the knock! I would love to be able to be in a position to do this for a family next year, I really think it would be great for Oliver to experience the giving end next time.
For Miriam's birthday, I had absolutely no money put aside for presents. So I took some old linen pants and made a rag doll body, used Oliver's old cords for a little dress, and used some yarn from a stash that was given to me when miram was born, and made a little doll. I also had just knit Miriam a sweater (from the same stash of yarn) and made a little matching sweater from the leftover scraps. I'll have to post up a picture sometime. For Christmas, I made Oliver a boy ragdoll, but as you can see, it is not finished. Currently, at least he has some pants and half of his hair--I'll have to post that up soon, too...
Here my tired little ones are yawning over the Doll bunk bed that grandpa and I worked on in the weeks leading up to Christmas. ("Making Christmas! Making Christmas!" was in my head for two weeks, heh heh.) Again, no money for anything, so it was from our old crib that was totally broken. It had been sitting out in the garden and next to the house in pieces for a year...I brought it in and started hacking away at it...brought the pieces to grandpa and told him kind of what I had in mind, and then he pretty much took it from there. He thankfully had screws and extra scraps of wood to make it suitable to stand up to childrens play. The kids really played and played with this on Christmas and the week after Christmas.
The quilts are from grandma's scrap pile--it's called a primitive heart pattern. Miriam's doll's quilt was finished first..grandma already had the orange hearts and white squares cut out, so all I had to do was assemble them. Oliver's dolls's quilt isn't quilted yet, but I finished it Christmas eve night at about 1:00 a.m. and Miriam kept waking up all night long, so I gave up at about 2:00 trying to get back to the quilt. Still not finished, but hey, I don't think Oliver or Miriam noticed.
Opening stockings, playing tic-tac-toe as they go.
daylight finally shines in on us...the tea set is from ikea, and they have really had a blast having tea party's or playing "restaurant". If you're concerned that Oliver didn't get any toys that were not "let's play house" themed...never fear, he got some lego sets and was very happy! They all got a book to read, too.
It was really a fun Christmas for me, I think the family enjoyed it, too. It was in sharp contrast to the very unhappy Christmas that we had last year. but that's another story for another post, I suppose.
