Treasured Memories from Christmas 2009

1. Reading our Advent book together each night and hearing them quote the parts from previous days.

2. Making delicious Christmas goodies with my budding chef.
3. Hearing Sawyer call our nativity set the "activity set."

4. Teaching Sawyer that Lee Anna's new make up kit (and any other make up, for that matter!) is not for him.

5. Hearing unsolicited "thank you's" after they opened each gift on Christmas morning.

6. Rehearsing every time Daddy left the house for two weeks to give him his gift of a surprise Christmas Concert.
7. Splitting up at the mall so that Sawyer and Lee Anna could shop for each other.

8. Singing "O Come Let Us Adore Him" together to end our prayer time each night.

9. Hearing Sawyer sing Christmas carols nonstop all month long--until it was time for the concert!

10. Hearing Lee Anna recite the Christmas story on Christmas morning.

11. Watching Lee Anna decide on her own to give one of her dolls to a needy little girl.

12. Telling and retelling our new favorite Christmas joke: What Christmas carol do they sing in the desert? O Camel Ye Faithful!

We hope you had a wonderful, joy-filled celebration with lots of memories to treasure.

Merry Christmas!

You Know You're the Third Child When...

it takes you six months to get included in the blog header!

I guess now Sarah Claire is an official Arab Musician. We're glad to finally have her join us. Thanks to Nikki for doing another super job on our blog design! She is great to work with.

Check back soon to see what we've been up to!

It's Our Turn

Well, I finally did one of these cute videos. Lee Anna's friend Madison is very sick this week, so we decided to make this video to try to cheer her up. It's already been watched many times at our house, and we thought you might enjoy seeing it too. I'm pretty sure these are the only snowballs these kids will be throwing at each other, since they live in the desert and all!

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All She Wants for Christmas

Daddy worked hard trying to get a good picture of Sarah Claire's new pearly whites, although she was a bit hesitant to show them off for the camera!

Believe me, they're in there! She cut her first two teeth in two days, and now Sawyer and Lee Anna are pretty sure she should be able to talk and eat whatever she wants. We'll be keeping a close eye on them. I don't think Sarah Claire's quite ready for apples and carrots yet!

It's That Time of Year Again!

Sarah Claire's not sure what all the fuss is about, but she's enjoying it with the rest of us! We've had fun decorating our home for Christmas this week. While much of it looks the same as in years past, we've also added a few new decorations and traditions this year.

We had fun working together to decorate the tree.

The kids also love having this little tree (which I got a few years ago for $1 at Walmart) in their own room. This year it has this pretty tree skirt that GG got them, so it's even better.

GG also found this great Advent calendar for us, and we are enjoying that new tradition this year. Some days the calendar has candy in it, and some days it has other things. In the Day 2 pocket they found a coupon for a "Christmas Activity," so we worked together to make our annual Christmas chain.

In the past we've always just used plain paper strips for our chain, but they were ready to take it up a notch this year, so we decorated each strip.

Lee Anna was the leader of the strip-decorating efforts. Sawyer decorated a total of one, while she and I did the other 22. Maybe next year we can divide the work more evenly. Sawyer was much more interested in helping with the stapling part of the project (which I did not let him do, since I am not interested in visiting any ERs this holiday season).

They were both proud of the finished product!

And here is one more new tradition we've added this year. I read about this book last year and was able to order a copy while we were in the states. It has 24 pages with a door to be opened on each page. Behind each door is a beautiful illustration with a portion of the Christmas story. The idea is to read each door you've opened every night, up to the door for that day. It's a great, fun way for us to recount the story each night leading up to Christmas.

So this is what we see when we gather at the tree each night before bedtime. It's been a great beginning to a joyful season, and we're enjoying our traditions, old and new (although I may need an Excel document to keep track of whose turn it is to check the calendar, tear off the chain, open the door, and blow out the candle!). Merry Christmas!