The Atkin Gang: I Feel like a Human Again!

Oh, sweet sigh! The holidays are over (as much as enjoy them when they are here), our spat with RSV is over, and a trip to the ER (I'll explain later) is over. Whew! What a season!

I finally feel like I have a grip on my life again and am ready to get back to reality, and catch up on an enormous amount of blogging.

Soo... almost a month late... We had a awesome Christmas!

This going to be a long post and I will not be offended if you skip parts... I know it is long but wanted to include all of it for journal purposes.

Getting Ready for Christmas

everyone participated in setting up the tree and decorations, it was a nice change to the usual "mom doing it by herself". I think we found a new tradition!

even Ryann had a stab at the tree branches

Turned out fairly good, huh. The best part are the homemade ornaments. I have really come to absolutely treasure those!

(note all the ornaments strategically placed about a foot off the ground)

Holiday Candy Making

in efforts to keep an old holiday tradition alive, we made Christmas chocolates. Oh, the kids thought they were in HEAVEN!!!!! lick'in and paint'in and lick'in and decorating and just a little more lick'in.

Ryan was still trying to figure all it out. I could tell she knew something was different between her pretzel in her hand and the yummy chocolate in Cassidy's.

Sorry Ry, there is always next year.

This was part of the lick'in

School Programs

Cassidy did an awesome report on Freya Stark and then got to dress up like her for Cassidy's cottage fair night, where all the kids got to show their stuff to the parents. She did such a great job.

This quarter Taylor's cottage was "Plymouth plantation" (studying about the Pilgrims, etc.) He really enjoyed it... however not as much as the "sweet shop" he studied the previous quarter.

Emma had a little program at preschool. She decided she was going to be shy that morning, even though all I heard for about a month is all the little holiday songs being belted out of the back seat of the car. Funny how they do that.

Christmas Morning
The kids were so excited! It took them forever to fall asleep, especially Cassidy. She just knew she was going to catch Santa in the act. Ahhhhhhhh... no pressure or anything. It was neat to watch how excited she was.

I just had to document Emma's "do" in the above picture. I was just rolling on the floor when I saw it. She didn't seem to care and just loved her new Hannah Montana outfit.

What an awesome brother to share with is baby sister! Too bad she didn't get any of the good stuff inside.

Christmas lunch with the Atkin's
It has always been so neat to have both mine and Jeremy's family close that we are able to go and visit everyone on the holidays.

Jeremy's parents are always so good to us at Christmas... they always put so much thought and effort into making Christmas nice for the kids. Thank you so much for all you do.

Hmmmm... yeah, I am just going to have to taste it!

Dinner with the Greene's

We finished the day up with dinner at my parents and all the Gang. Wow, how we have grown over the years. There were 41 of us, 1 on the way (that we know about), and 3 missionaries... What a crowd!