I have such a special Aunt Cathy. She is very thoughtful and fun. She invited her sisters, nieces and great-nieces over for a fun afternoon of ornament making. I'm glad Grammy was there with an extra set of hands.
We were a little late setting up our tree this year (we've been so tied up with the play). We usually set it up on a family night. It's always fun to look at our ornaments and remember where they came from or who gave them to us. Most of our ornaments were given to us by Edward's dad's cousin, Carrie. She is a very special lady to our family. She never married or had children, so she has always kind of spoiled Edward and his siblings over the years. Each year since he was born she has given him an ornament. Now that we have children, she sends each of them several of their own ornaments each year. The kids love to find their own. We also have a tradition of buying an ornament on each vacation we take. So far we have ornaments representing Orlando, Bar Harbor, Maine, San Diego, New York City,and Montreal, Canada (somehow we missed one in Washington, D.C.).
Ross gets ready to put the angel on top.
Mallory's job was to make sure the tree skirt was straight.
I don't know about you all that have young children, but at our house, bedtime can be absolute CHAOS! Actually, Elizabeth is usually excellent, but the boys... well that's another story. It usually sounds like elephants are break-dancing above us from about 8:30 until around10:00 each night. I'm serious. Elizabeth feels left out not having a roommate. She doesn't believe us when we tell her she'll be thankful for that in a few years. So every once in a while, we feel sorry enough for her that we allow her to sleep in the boys' room, even though we know we'll need to take a couple Advil before we retire to bed.
A couple of things about this first picture. There are exactly 14 inches between the boys' beds. At the other house, we stacked the beds into bunk beds, but they still shared the bottom twin bed each night. So, when we moved here I thought I'd put the beds really close together so they'd feel like they were in the same bed, but they'd still have their own space. Wrong. They still share a twin bed each night. Anyway, when Elizabeth bunks in with them, she has to sleep in that 14 inch space. Even though there is an extra bed. Even though there is plenty of other floor space. Crazy. Also, you'll notice that Drew fell asleep sitting up. Leaning against the metal bed frame. Ahh. Now that's a good night's sleep!
So, apparently on this particular night, Drew and Elizabeth were driving Ross nuts. Of course the chaos is never his fault. He decided they were too loud, so he said he would just sleep in the closet. And he did! When we came up to check on the "quiet" we found him in the closet with his pillow and blanket. Therefore, both beds were empty that night. Crazy.
