christmas- post-illness

now that we seem to be on the other end of this horrible respiratory monster that we have been battling all week, i will post all of the (of course) random pictures of our christmas. i always hope to record our most special occasions with more attention to detail, but i am lucky that we have any pictures at all from this year. just looking through the camera's viewfinder made my headache pound harder, so i am glad for what we have.

We opened gifts four times for christmas this year (with different sets of relatives), which confused the heck out of gabe. but naturally he thought it was all a lot of fun!

as for the day itself, it was a lazy one. i spent most of the morning cooking and picking up so that i could spend the afternoon resting. steve spent a decent portion of the day cleaning out closets, getting rid of lots of stuff, and making room for new things. the boys, of course, spent most of the day playing.

the highlight of our holiday, though, was the little kitchen. i have wanted a kitchen for the boys for a very long time, but because of the size of our house, deemed a store-bought one an impossibility. if we were to own a play kitchen, it would have to be made to specifically fit in a spot that i had already chosen for it. a friend gave us an old end table and we started making plans. of course, it would not have turned out nearly as nice had a (fantastic! amazing! wonderful!) couple at our church, jim and patty, not taken the project under their wing. they adopted our little end table and returned it to us on christmas eve completely remade and amazing! without them i am sure we could have come up with something, but this was better than we could ever have imagined on our own!