Wednesday on the Homestead

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I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. Our family sure did. For the first time in many years we did not have any extended family join us. The kids were a bit down about that. However we had a small and simple Christmas morning that was very un-chaotic and enjoyable. We started a tradition (did not know it was going to be a tradition when we started this, lol) that Christmas morning breakfast is cereal. I don’t typically buy my kids cereal and when, on the rare occasions, I do I try and buy something that is as relatively healthy as possible. The kids would always walk up the cereal aisle at the store longingly looking at the sugary kid cereal. So a couple of years ago I bought them several boxes of it to eat on Christmas morning and they all went crazy about it.  So I did it last year too. This year before the kids got up I put the pretty Christmas table cloth on and set bowls and spoons with pretty cloth napkins all around the table. Each of them had a candy cane in their cereal bowl. I then set out several boxes of this year’s kid type cereal, a plate of cookies, sparkling cider and eggnog. They loved it! And I loved how easy it made Christmas morning. I did redeem myself from serving all that sugar for breakfast by having a big turkey dinner complete with all the trimmings (even stuffing made with my own homemade whole wheat bread) for lunch!

 

After socks and gift opening we had a nice lunch and then did something that we have never done before on a Christmas Day. We took the kids to the movies. We don’t go to the movies very often. I think Lord of the Rings 3 was the last movie we took the whole family to (and I am not a Lord of the Rings movie fan so it was rather boring to me). This time we saw National Treasure 2 and it was wonderful!!!   I highly recommend it. However since we are not avid movie goers we innocently thought that the theater would be rather quiet on Christmas day. Well imagine our surprise when we pulled into the parking lot to find it packed and people standing in line to see the movies. When we got up to get our tickets we found out that the theater and time slot for our movie was sold out! The next showing was over an hour away. We purchased the tickets to that one and waited. In the end it was worth the wait. We had so much family fun. To top off our day, shortly before we were leaving to go to theater it started snowing. We drove into the city in a white wonderland (at least until we got out of the mountains, after that it was just rain in the city). What started out as a day that seemed like it would not be as fun as times in the past ended up being one of the best Christmases for us. 

 

Now today I am inspired to clean, plan and get ready to move into the new year. I have lots of details to keep working on in several areas and am trying to get a handle on some organizing. 

 

The kids got up and are now busy putting away the Christmas decorations (I got this from my mother. She always cleaned up the day after Christmas). I always feel more motivated and excited for the new year when the Christmas décor is put away until next year. 

 

Tobin has a couple extra days off over the next couple of weeks so that will be nice to have dad home and he will have some shorter work weeks. Today he is doing some car maintenance on my little red Jetta, and has more details to knock off of his to-do list.

 

Leanne and I are going to sit down and finish getting her packet of info organized and assembled for her missions trip so we can get that sent in by the first deadline.

 

Dinner tonight may be turkey enchiladas. I need to go and get some rice soaked for this meal. 

 

I hope you all have a wonderful Wednesday on your homesteads!

 

P.S... I had to share this picture with you all. Emily took this of our dog Ellie.. she said it was her Christmas picture, LOL.. 


Cathy H.. I thought you would especially like this pic.. 

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Comments

  1. gabbie427December 26, 2007 at 9:11 AM

    Sounds like you had a wonderful Christmas full of old traditions and a few new ones as well. I bet the kids had alot of fun and from the soudns of it....good food too.


    I love the doggie Christmas picture!!! How adorable!


    God's Blessings,

    Amy Jo

    ReplyDelete
  2. CathyDecember 26, 2007 at 1:02 PM

    Crystal,

    You are very right...I LOVE the precious picture of Ellie. She is so adorable. Love that little sweater.

    It was so nice reading about your Christmas day...my parents also went to see that movie yesterday evening and LOVED it.

    Love ya my friend,

    Cathy

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousDecember 26, 2007 at 11:31 PM

    Crystal,

    I took Tommy and 2 of his friends to see that movie a couple of days before Christmas. We loved it too!! It sounds like you had a wonderful day.


    ~Ann~ www.tisthegifttobesimple.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. bluroseDecember 27, 2007 at 1:18 AM

    Our funny story about cold cereal is that I have a dd that is 7 who recently visited a friend that eats boxed cereal and to my daughters delight seen that their cereal box contained a toy! How funny it seemed to me that she did not know this but sure enough, now sometimes she asks for cereal, not because she wants to eat it but because she wants to see if it has a toy inside. HMMMM...

    Glad you had a geat Christmas!

    Blessings, Jeanette

    ReplyDelete
  5. VickieDecember 28, 2007 at 2:03 AM

    Cute & easy. I like this idea!

    Glad to hear you had a merry Christmas.

    ReplyDelete
  6. albaymomJanuary 2, 2008 at 1:41 AM

    Much better to go on Christmas Eve, we took the kids to see "Enchanted" and the theater was just about empty!

    ReplyDelete

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