Putting Christmas Officially Away

It always seem to take awhile to put all of our Christmas things away. Here it is mid January and there are still a few items that need to be taken down. Most of our Christmas cards were placed on the closet door (a few are on the fridge), they look great surrounding the trees the kids made at the YMCA on moring. It certainly is nice that they do so many crafty things there while I go exercise. They get to cut, paste and glue to their hearts content and I don't have to do it. But back to the cards. They were place on the door along with our Jesse Tree. (BTW....The Jesse Tree was fun to do throughout December. Reading all those Old Testament Stories reminded me that we should revisit the Bible stories again so in January we started the Old Testament.) You can't actually see the tree part now that all 25 of the picture "ornaments" are placed on, but under all those there is a brown paper stick tree that slowly filled as we placed each picture.

So this is the last remaining Christmas decorations in our house. The tree, nativities and such were all put away before the new year. We received a few cards after Christmas so it would have been a shame to never put them up for at least a little while.

Early in December we got our first Christmas card and Sophie asked me why we never send out Christmas cards. I always mean to but somehow I never get around to it. That isn't a great excuse, I know. We also don't have many pictures of our whole family. I know we could have them taken but that would require planning and forethought. I just am not that motivated or organized I guess. But when Sophie asked why we don't I felt that prick of guilt for not doing better. So we went to iphoto and looked through the thousands of pictures in our library in hopes of finding one that would work. And I think we did alright. It was taken in Salt Lake this Summer but that isn't too old, right? So this is what we sent out. Thank you Costco for next day printing!

 If you didn't get one from us, it is most likely because we just didn't have your mailing address. So if I can get my act together for next year and you want one from us, make sure I have your snail mail address.
So what do you do with Christmas cards you have received once the holidays pass. I usually stick them in my scrapbook for that year. But I am now about 3 years behind and don't know when I will ever get caught up.

My kids kept asking when we were going to do a gingerbread house.  We finally bought a kit after Christmas when they were 75% off and the kids had a great time decorating it. It doesn't have to always be done before Christmas. It is more of a winter time activity and not really a Christmas one.

We also finally got some of the Christmas books that I had put on hold weeks ago. This one was worth the wait.

For those already acquainted with the Duchess Bakes a Cake then Plum Pudding for Christmas is a fun companion book. The characters this time need to bake a plum pudding and don't have any plums in the castle. I love reading aloud books written in rhyme. The Duchess is one of my favorites to read to the kids, so this was one I was glad our library had. It is out of print of course and somewhat hard to find. I am going to have to add it to our list of fun books to read next holiday season.

So now I think we are finally finished with Christmas themed decorations, books and activities. Back to the old grind I guess. The kids have had a somewhat light load as far as school work goes. But we are slowly adding all the usual subjects back into our day as well as a few new things. I will get to those later.

For now we are just all enjoying the cool winter weather all the good indoor reading time it affords us. The Wii, thankfully hasn't taken over our lives. It was a worry at first but my kids are keeping to the rules and we are enjoying it without it taking over all our spare time.