Merry Christmas to all and to all...I'm going to bed.

One tradition I am passing on is every single item in the stockings are wrapped. My Aunt and mom would stay up all night and wrap all 8 stockings (my aunts 6 kids, plus my brothers and mine) and when I stay stockings..these were HUGE, bottomless, handmade stockings..so that was a huge job for them.

I have to admit that the kids did get a lot of gifts this year despite our economic state. But what many of you don't know about me is if I see a good deal (and I mean $6 and under for what would typically be a $25+ item, I buy it and save it). So Target has this huge winter clearance sale in January every year and everything is 80% off of the already sale price. So last year, I spent around $200 on $800 worth of items and just saved them. I used them for future birthday parties (which worked great since I didn't have to buy anything all year). I had three 39 gallon bags left over from the move that I packed and then shoved them all up high in the closet. I finally got to a point where I was done storing everything (hey, the Jan. clearance is coming up again ya know) and so needless to say, I was overly generous with Christmas with the kids and other kids we were buying for this year. I did give away a ton of things when we moved because we weren't sure about what kind of space we would have and I didn't want to move everything. So basically, they are restocked. :)

I will miss that this time of year is almost over. I love lighting my Holiday Wreath candles, decorating, baking (and eating) and watching all of the different Christmas movies. We have always made Jesus a huge part of Christmas and really have always wanted the children to focus on him and doing for others versus just the material part...the gifts (although this post does seem a little materialistic based on the pictures alone, but hey, I didn't want to post a pictureless post). I hope you all had a wonderful and blessed Christmas this year. We love you all and now I'm signing off after a very long night of catching up on this blog.