12 days 'til Christmas

This past month has been crazy, so to all those who check our blog regularly, I apologize for the lack of news. After five weeks without a shower, our bathroom is finally put back together. Yay!! We also have all our Christmas shopping and preparations done, so now we get to relax and enjoy the holiday.

Last night was our Christmas party at church, and here is this year's picture of Andrew with Santa. The party was great, with two highlights I just have to share. They both occurred during the 'program' that followed the meal, while we were waiting for the 'special visitor' to arrive. First, when one elderly gentleman stood up and began reading a Christmas story, Andrew poked my arm and proclaimed several times in a row (in a very loud voice), "Look, it's Count Dooku!!" A couple minutes later he again proclaimed in that same loud voice, "He said a bad word!" Then about ten minutes later when he just couldn't wait any longer and was overcome with excitement, he jumped off his chair and ran up to the stage, climbed the stairs, and scrambled into the big armchair by the Christmas tree to wait for the arrival of Santa. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but he was talking almost as loud as the person reading their part of the program and he was pointing up at the colorful lights above the stage and smiling. I just sat in my chair and laughed. Andrew is usually so painfully shy nowadays that I was happy to see him doing something so brave.

Now it's just 12 more days 'til Christmas and we're all getting uber excited. A couple weeks ago Andrew and I created a countdown calendar by decorating a page for each of the 28 days until Christmas with stickers and stamps, and then stapled them together. Each morning Andrew gets to tear off another day and throw it in the trash. At first he wasn't too excited, but each day this week we have been woken up to Andrew asking if he can "tear off another day until Christmas", and he seems to ask me at least five times a day if Santa is really going to bring him presents. I sometimes wonder who's more excited.... him, or us!

PS: I almost forgot to mention our great Thanksgiving. We spent it with Trav's family in Salem and really had a good time. In addition to having lots of fun with our family, we got to eat at our favorite restaurant and see some of our Salem friends. The food was amazing all weekend, but I have to admit that I didn't end up eating any pumpkin pie. Trav's mom made pumpkin bars and I couldn't keep my hands off them, so I had to make a deal with myself that if I skipped the pie I could eat all the pumpkin bars that I wanted. Seriously, talk about yummy!

Happy Holidays !!!!!!!