Since August, we'd been looking forward to our holiday trip to St. Maarten (post forthcoming), but that didn't stop us from also enjoying a little bit of holiday fun at home.
picking out our tree in early December
decorating the outdoors
boys applying ornaments
Ta-da...
Artie in his "fashion" - He's not crazy about the sweaters.
It's Artie's first Christmas with us!
We had a fun family day out shopping for gifts for others, prioritizing shopping at small businesses and brick-and-mortar stores, rather than just immediately defaulting to Amazon. No doubt, Amazon is more convenient, but in this current cultural climate, we are doing our very small part to resist the oligarchy. Anyway, our main gift to ourselves, including the boys, was the St. Maarten trip, but we did pick up a couple small items for the boys while we were out, and called them "stocking stuffers."
Holidays always include an abundance of concerts.
This was the Lake Michigan Youth Orchestra (LMYO) concert.
Evan did get a new bike, which was a pretty hefty purchase. We'd been putting off the purchase for a bit, finally just arranged it all calling it a combo birthday/Christmas gift. This bike should be the only bike he ever needs (unless he becomes an avid cyclist at some point), so it's worth it. And now the poor kiddo can ride his own bike, instead of using mine or whomever's.
When we got back from St. Maarten, we celebrated Ponka Christmas at my mom and dad's house. Burke took this pic of Ryan and me in our festive hats. I'm grateful for this one, because I don't look super old and hideous, and it proves I exist. (There are not always tons of pics of me, since I take most of the pictures.) I will always treasure this one of me and my big boy. It instantly because one of my favorites.
opening stockings
Caleb and Emily open a gift from us (me) to both of them. It was three books, so not too exciting for them, but Aunt Teacher (me) thinks they're great! Hopefully, they read and enjoy them.
Evan plays Monopoly Knockout with Caleb and Emily. It's some version of Monopoly that's more aggressive.
Family Selfie - All 11 of us are there, even though you can only see slivers of some of our faces.
The droopy, dry tree still smelled good.
Welcome 2025!
