Christmas Recap

ahhh christmas. This christmas was a turning point for me seeing that we have the little one who is now old enough to understand jesus birthday party, (to a degree) . We have been preparing him for the holiday with church and the advent wreath. Books helped too. I was no longer excited to get gifts. That excitement was replaced by awaiting the joy that Ak would get via gifts. Theresa did a good job explaining how that joy was supposed to be assosiated with baby jesus.
Im not even going to try to recreate what she said. But it was on point.


walkin to church


blowing out advent candles

i went to home depot on xmas eve to get our tree. thats our tradition via our anglican religeon. we keep it low key and then the night before xmas we put up the decorations, lights and tree!
(that and trees are free at this point). But wait! hold the phone! Trees were not even marked down when i got there. Everyone was like, "hey, these are supposed to be free!" I guess times are tough and home depot wants every little penny.


We also prepared by cooking cookies for gifts and food for the big party. It was my first xmas night staying up late preparing stuff, unwrapping gifts for akello and then wrapping them back up again so as to be easy to open, decorating and transforming the the living room from a school into a suitable hosting space for jesus's birthday party the next day.



oh, and i had to make a fancy menu of course.



The next morning i was just as excited to wake up as Ak. We rushed to the living room to make coffee and warm up some tamales. Ak has a knack for opening up the biggest gifts first. pretty funny. We bought him a guitar that was just his size. He has a ukelelee wich is small, and moms guitar wich is huge. this was perfect. He loves it.







all day had family coming over to the house. By the end of the day ak was walking around asking for more gifts. Whoa! pull up on them reigns boy!


ak and g pimp their new slippers. (wish i got the giraffe ones, thankness for receipts!)



cheers grandma!


ak passing out the gifts!





days prior to the big day
ak decided to make cookies for gifts and deliver them around the neighborhood. A toddlers work is never done.

get the dishes...

layout the ingredients...

mix it!




course he did have some help!

ak on his stepstool putting cookies in the tupperwares

time to wrap them up...




...and deliver!




Ak made some very healthy cookies, granola bites really. Not to sweet, but oh so addicting.

after that he said, "i wanna work hard like daddy"

so it was on with his work boots (rain boots) and outside we went to work on the trail.

he is quite the little helper.


the neighbors thought i was going ghetto for awhile parking my truck on the lawn, but no, twas simply another load to transport. i think ive been back and forth to whitlesey 10 times maybe? more?

Here we are unloading a load for the trail. Well, ak worked, and i just took pictures.




ak soon tired of my wheelbarrow and decided that his filled up a lot faster.







we were making good progress until akello heard the garbage truck. it was all over after that.








So it was back to me to compact the granite. I used this bad boy to compact the first layer.




then i rented a "whaker" as there called form home depot to finish off the second layer.



i rented it for the day, the day before xmas, thereby giving me two days to work on the trail before taking it in. ha! too bad i was too tired from drinking baileys irish cream and whisky all day to work on it till the evening. but the trail is done! whew!
merry xmas to Ak and his friends!



whats frustrating is that the bendaboard expands and contracts with the weather. as seen from the pic above, you can never have a straight line no matter how many stakes you use. it drives me nuts!!


we now have the pushtoys off the patio. this frees up the patio for other activities.



now i just got to build a sandbox and paint akellos room. and ill be done for the "break"

speaking of trails, we went to go check out the trail of lights. pretty fun, we even found a nativity scene amongst all the spongebob and dora exhibits.





for xmas i received the iron gym. (as seen on tv) from my uncle. I really have been wanting this thing and knew in some weird way that somebody would get it for me. and out of the three gifts that i got, it was one of them...and i didnt even ask for it! i put it together and tried it out. it works pretty well. i am going to start a routine with it on the first OF JANUARY along with half of america. And along with half of america, i will quit after the first month. HA!