Christmas 2009

Santa made treasure chests for each of the girls and left a note to tell them they can add the last details and stain with their daddy.  And Santa always leaves a gum tree.

Rowyn loves her airplane.  When she saw all that Santa had brought, she was putting her stocking stuff in her treasure box and said, "It's ok he didn't bring me an airplane."  That was the one thing she asked for.  Well Santa couldn't figure out a good way to wrap those treasure boxes...

You learn a lot about a person in when in their "special place".  Reese wanted a little one on one with her Momma.  So Momma stopped to listen.

Santa brought Daddy some cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory.

He even left it in the freezer for him...so smart Santa.

Aunt Eunice testing out the Bubble gum gloss...GORGEOUS!

Cousins!  (and a little bit of Aunt Jaymi trying to make Hudson be still)

All in all a good Christmas.  Lots of food, fun, and family.  Yeah, good Christmas.

Ahhhh insulation

So we live in a house that was originally built in 1890.  That is not a misprint.  1890.  With a house this old you get some fun character that homes now a days just don't have.  Singlepane windows with the old rope pulley system.  Original fir wood floors with beadboard wainscott and ceilings.  But there are also some sacrifices made.  Well for the past two years we have sacrificed insulation.  In the beginning of December we had about a week of super cold weather.  I'm talking it got up to 17 as a high one day.  Now on top of having no insulation our only source of heat is a wood stove.  When we moved here there was a propane stove that heated the entire house.  But we couldn't financially swing that.  It was about $700 for 5 weeks worth of heat.  So Ben built a beautiful rock kind of cave to put the woodstove in.  We love it.  But no matter how hot we got it with that stove there was still a breeze.  The cold air would just swoop up through the cracks of the wood floor and litterally blow on your feet.  You can sit on my couch and feel a breeze.  My dad even asked one day and asked, "Where is that breeze coming from?"  It just comes from everywhere.

Well with that really cold weather I was getting the house up to 55-65 degrees.  That is with two other heaters.  One little electrical one and an oil radiator for upstairs.  My girls hated to use the bathroom because it got so cold in there and in the mornings up in my bathroom you could see your breath.  If we wanted it above 65 we had to turn on our oven and crack it open.  The girls got used to hats and coats on in the house.  Poor Ben was working out in this ridiculous weather (trusses none the less) and staying in a camper where I'm sure our 55 would have felt toasty.  So time for some insulation.

Our attic before, yes those nails you see are the nails from our roofing.

That is actually siding and there is even an old bees nest still attached.

Baffels set up to blow in behind them.

Very long tube to run from their truck down to our house, much less up to our bathroom window in to the other side to blow above the girls rooms.

Ahh much warmer.

I didn't take pictures but they also insulated the floor.  No more blowing on our feet.

What Ben's been missin'

Ben has been working a ways away so he has been staying at the jobsite during the week and then will come home on the weekend.  Makes for a long week, but we try to  have fun with it.  Especially with it being the Christmas season.  Every year we have the girls paint on paper and that is our wrapping paper for the year.  They love it and I'll be honest, so do I.  It's fun to do and to see how they have grown.  We also paint their hands on our tree skirt every year.  They grow so fast.  We paint their hands and feet and have them walk over the paper and then we let them paint whatever they want.

Gotta make it sparkly.

We also made a gingerbread house and a candy bar choo-choo train.  I had my plans all drawn out, but I had a week of the "floppsies".  Where every thing you attempt flops.  So no baking the house from scratch.  Aunt Eunice saved us with an extra one she had.

had to work the frosting...it was pretty stiff.

Christmas Eve was filled with baking.  The girls helped me make a batch of cookies.  They got to put kisses in the middle.  Until Reese burned herself.  Then I felt awful and that ended that!

Looking for that perfect tree

Ben and I had gone to pick out our tree this year with a slight lump in our throat.  Money has been tight so we wanted to be realistic about what we would spend on a tree (that was pretty much useless after the 25).  We both were thinking a 5 maybe 6 footer...that was pushin' it.

Rowyn picked it out this year.

All she had to do was look at daddy with those sparkling brown eyes of hers and say,"Daddy, I want this one."  "Ok Rowyn, if that's the one."  Ben answered as a shot him a look of "Seriously?"  "What the heck," he says,"when I was little I wanted a big one too."  So we brought home a beautiful 9 foot tree.  It is perfect though.

Rowyn was a great help at decorating.  She likes things to look "just so."  Like her momma.

Reese on the other hand never even saw the tree come in the front door.

Ben's contribution to decorating the tree.  But without him...we would have no star right?