Signs of Christmas

 Christmas is in full swing around here. I spent the last few days cleaning and organizing the storage room, so the rest of the Christmas decorations are piled up waiting for attention. Since my storage room has been shrinking over the last year, this year when the Christmas Rubbermaids are boxed back up, they are going to live in the barn storage area instead of my storage room. (Yes, it is mine and only those with the code may enter.) Relocating the Christmas decorations and the empty boxes that are kept for items under warranty netted me about four shelves of space.



Thankfully we located the tree skirt since this picture

Tori made me  happy matching her three little sisters

This is our first Christmas with missing children. As a military wife, however, I did do Christmas without JD before - that was not fun and it makes me cry to hear the military moms and dads on the radio wishing their families back here a Merry Christmas while they are serving over-seas!

Face time with Gabriel

 On Saturday I did one of those huge grocery shopping events that involve cleaning  the refrigerators out, clipping coupons, and planning a menu (sort of, the best I ever do...). What made my day was the chicken breasts had $1.25 off coupons on them. That only happens about once a year and I was fortunate to hit it right. That's equivalent to about 33% off the already low Commissary price. After loading all the packages that had coupons, I noticed that the whole chickens, organic and regular, both had the same coupons. While I was comparing the price difference, the meat man came out and told me that he can't sell the organic and how about he marks them half price and still gives me the coupons? Uh, yeah, since that made them considerably lower than the regular ones. He asked me, "how many do you want and I'll re-price them?" I answered, "all of them." He looked at me and said, "I may have more in the back." I answered, "I'll take them also." He said, "Are you sure?" I answered, "yes, I have 11 children!" At that he started slashing prices and lets just say my freezer is packed full! What an enormous blessing!


Only one of the large bag covered surfaces

Elijah loves gingerbread men. We aren't sure if it's the taste or the story, but Alyssa has made them with him the last few years. Yesterday, they decorated them.

She made them each a huge one - no cookie cutter here; they were about a foot tall.

Apparently it was just as good as he hoped!

 

Bless Alyssa's heart, she then made a big batch of sugar cookies and different home-made frostings for all the kids to decorate after school.

I wasn't home, so let's just say, they are well frosted and well decorated.

And I'm fairly sure Elijah had his Christmas cookie quota in just one day!