The Rules for the Kreativ Blogger Award are :
1. The winner may put the logo on their blog.
2. Put a link to the person who sent you the award.
3. Nominate 5 blogs.
4. Put links to their blogs.
5. Leave a message for your nominees.

Thank you to Susan for this award! I don't get too many, and seeing it's taken me AGES to get this one up it's no wonder! LOL

I would like to nominate:

Crazymumm - Lucy
Midnite - Lisa
Jenny
Belynda
Gypsyangel - Karen

Thank you to all of these beautiful women for inspiring me. Check out their blogs!

The big family "do" at my mum's place this year was absolutely crazy! There were 22 people there, aunts, unclues, cousins, brothers, sisters, neices, nephews and everyone all having fun. It's starting to get a bit TOO big though - we're all hvaing kids of our own, and with Kim due again this year it's only set to get bigger! We might have to start breaking into smaller family groups.

But as it was it was a good day!

The opening of presents was loud, chaotic and heaps of fun for the kids. Caitie got to practice her photography with her NEW camera...


And there weren't enough seats for everyone, but somehow these 3 monkeys managed to claim the best spots in the house!

The tree looked pretty bare by the time everyone was finished...

And then everyone separated to have a bitof fun while lunch was getting prepared and served. Of course the boys dissapeard to Ryan's room to play the Playstation. Both Ryan and Ethan got new games they couldn't keep away from...

We were serenaded frequently by the blue penguin singing "Blue Christmas". Phillip absolutely adores it and comes racing whenever it plays, but it freaked Elijah out!

I don't have any photos of the actual lunch to show, but I'm sure heaps of others in the family have some they'll share. I was too busy having more than my share of the 3kgs of prawns!

ALSO, I want to share a parting Christmas present with the scrappers out there...

The shop I have been a guest DT for - SCRAP N CRAFT WITH T - are having a HUGE sale. up to 70% off a lot of the product and a patterned paper sale where you can get paper from as little as 25c! To get to the specials page click on this link...

SPECIALS

There are HUNDREDS of specials!

Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and enjoyed the time with your family celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus!

Christmas Morning at Last!

As i guess is usual for a family with 2 young kids, we had WAY too many presents under the tree! Even though we thought we had been really good with not going too overboard, the tree was still overflowing on Christmas morning...


I TRIED to get a decent photo of the 2 kids in front i=of the pile in the morning. After taking about 10 (and this being the best of the bunch) I gave up. It was just NOT going to happen. Why interrupt Christmas morning with a whole pile of photos?

There was heaps of wrapping paper, laughing, lots of "oooooohhhhhh"s from Elizabeth, and some screaming from Phillip as he couldn't wait for the toys to be taken out of the packaging (WHY do they put SO many layers of packaging on everything? Cardboard, plastic, twist ties, etc. etc.). The kids had so much fun!

And not a mention of Santa even once. These 2 I am hoping to raise not believing in Santa. I reckon Christmas is about family and friends and giving and receiving presents and celebrating Jesus, and I don't quite get where a big fat red suited guy comes into it? Christmas is so magical with lights, carols, family, etc. I don't think it needs more! Besides I hate to lie to my kids and I think it's demeaning to think kids should believe in something so obviously fake (on the news on Christmas Eve they had a report that Santa was just leaving the North Pole, and then it was followed by the weather girl in the shopping centre with "Santa" standing next to her... How stupid do we think our kids are??).

Anyway, off my soap-box. Christmas morning was heaps of fun. Breakfast was delayed and we had fun spending it as a family and ripping paper!

Everyone got some things they really loved. I was spoiled and got a new printer/scanner that has a negative scanner. So you all may be subjected to some pretty old and daggy photos as I gradually scan in all those old negatives...

Elizabeth LOVED her dolls house and her Nintendogs game. Phillip loves it all (particularly anything that makes noise). Matt got Holden stuff and a portable DVD player for watching things on the train.

And then we headed off to my mum's house for the HUGE Christmas lunch. I don't know how she does it, but each year it's big, loud and well organised.

So, on to the next post and next lot of photos...

The lead-up to Christmas...

Twas the week before Christmas and all through he house you could hear Carols and kids who have had too much advent calendar chocolate...

We went looking at Christmas lights a few days before Christmas. Managed to get a couple of photos of the kids! Not exactly the best lighting conditions! LOL

The kids had HEAPS of fun as we were driving around. We were expecting them to get tired and possibly even for Phillip to fall asleep, butit got to 10:30pm and they were BOTH going strong! We had to call it a night because Matt and I were getting tired! LOL

And then there's the traditions of watching Carols By Candlelight on TV. I love this time of year - snuggle up on the lounge eating popcorn and shortbread while watching actors sing Christmas Carols badly (with the occasional "real" singer making it more bearable!)

So as not to overload poor blogger with too many photos (they really should work on the way photo uploading works in blogger - it's REALLY bad), I'll follow this post with our actual Christmas celebrations.

How do you celebrate in the lead-up to Christmas? Do you have any family traditions? Having a young family it's fun watching the traditions gradually develop and it'd be great to have some ideas of what others do...

Christmas Tree

We have finally decorated our Christmas tree for the year. It's taken a couple of weeks. One week we put the tree up, and then we put lights on and found that they didn't work, so I had to get MORE lights and put them on, and then FINALLY it got decorated.

Phillip didn't really do much actual "decorating", but Elizabeth really got into it this year!

I love Christmas! It's such a special time of the year. I love how families get together, I love shopping for presents, and I love listening to Christmas carols in the shops. How cool is it that at this time of the year people can sing such loving songs to such a wonderful Saviour and not feel self-conscious about it at all! Even those who don't believe in God still join in this wonderful time.

We've almost finished out Christmas shopping already! So proud of us!! Only one more thing to get, and I'm off to buy it today.

Have a great second week of December, and if I get around to clearing out my scraproom I might even have some scrapping to show some time soon! LOLOLOL

Phillip's Birthday and Party!

Well, my baby is now 1! It's hard to believe, but he had his birthday last monday.

We had his birthday party on Sunday.

Excuse the photo innundation! I guess each one is pretty self explanatory...

And then on his actual birthday on Monday we had another cake. Chocolate this time!

It's amazing how quickly the past year has gone. It only seems like yesterday that he was a tiny baby in my arms.