Welcome Christmas

The holidays are officially here at my house. We put up our tree tonight and I have lots of pictures to share. Whew! It's kind of my unofficial job to fluff all the parts to the tree, put it together and string the lights--then Tony (and subsequent children) helps decorate it. Jeremiah was SO excited, kept getting into things and from having to fuss at him every 45 seconds I put the tree together wrong. 3 times. Hannah crawled over and chewed on the cord, which made us nervous she would electrocute herself so I had to put her to sleep so I could finish the lights.

Jeremiah was a great and frustrating help, LoL! He had 3 particular branches he liked, I guess, because every ornament we handed him went on one of them. Tony jept having to rearrange them. Cheryl (my dear MIL) gave Jeremiah a singing, piano-playing snowman for his first Christmas (2005). Tony replaced the batteries and the kids had the biggest time with it!

It started out being about 55 degrees today but about noon it started raining and got stinking, miserably cold. Good night to stay in doors and trim the tree! One of our LQS had a sale today and I got a couple yards of batiks to use in some more bags and fabric to make Hannah's stocking! It is soo cute, I will post a pic when I finish the stocking in a couple days. Yesterday while at Mom's the kids made milk-carton gingerbread houses (graham crackers instead of gingerbread). Jeremiah was so proud of his we had to take a pic before he started eating it, LoL!

In other news, I finally got the Ugly Quilt pinned out. Hope to start quilting it tomorrow. Speaking of jewel boxes, here's a pic of a Christmas quilt I made in '04 out of 5" charms from 3 years worth of Christmas swaps. I meant to make a Jewel Box pattern, but was 2mo pregnant at the time and had "pregnant brain" so it didn't turn out right. I love this quilt though. The inner red border isn't a Christmas fabric but was the right shade of red and the outter border is a green batik with Christmas trees. I pieced together all the siggy squares I got in the swaps for the label on the back.

I started working on Betsy's hat to match Aubree's. I'm going to take it with me to my aunt's tomorrow, I'm going to visit with my grandparents for a couple hours before they head back to Ohio. Then it's home for (hopefully, Lord willing!) a nap and some actual quilting!

This is our tree. Isn't it pretty?