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Whew! It’s been awhile since I’ve done a blog post. Should I reintroduce myself? My name is Michelle and I am a photographer and mom. (And maybe a few other things too.)
Christmas was different this year but it was good too. We made some new traditions, continued some old traditions and we were thankful for all of the family time.
Our first celebration was with the Enebo side of the family. We spent a lovely day with all of the Enebos including the newest one, Wade. Allen’s sister, Deana, and Wade were engaged the day before so that was the best present of all! We only got one picture of our celebration but it’s a good one!
That picture was taken with Deana’s mirrorless Sony camera. It’s so small and easy to use that it got me thinking. It would be perfect for an upcoming trip AND I needed a write off. Done! All the rest of the pictures in this post were taken with my new camera. Please don’t hold the soft Christmas morning pictures against my new Sony. It was still dark when we were opening presents!
After helping at church at a Christmas Eve service we went to my Mom’s house for a lovely Tortiere dinner with the Jackson side of our family. It was such fun to see my cousins and aunt and uncle in addition to our crew. Mrs. Santa also brought all of our jammies here so we could open them all together. (No pictures of this because I am lame. And I’m extra uncool for using the word lame.)
Before the kids went to sleep we started a new tradition. This is the part of Christmas I had been dreading the most. My Dad had always been the one to read The Night Before Christmas to the kids. His version was always silly and had the kids in stitches. While I was worrying about this Jill and Ellie decided that THEY wanted to read the book this year. I was so relieved. This was the perfect solution and all of the kids enjoyed it. Hurdle successfully navigated.
The stockings were hung in the mudroom with care…
The kids all slept together in the basement playroom. Since they couldn’t come upstairs without passing the Christmas tree (and seeing what Santa brought) they had to stay in their room until 7am when we got up. When I was growing up my parents used to make us stay in our room until 7am too. What we didn’t know was that they used to turn our clock back an hour so it was really 8am. Very sneaky! We don’t have that luxury though with all these Apple devices. So 7am it was!
Santa was good to everybody. Kate got her first iphone. (She had to help Santa with the cost because of our family ‘buy in’ rules but she was more than happy to do that.) Ellie got a purse she had been looking at for more than a year and Santa had to surprise Jill because she never know what to ask for. Santa figured that since she likes to listen to music so much a nice Bose bluetooth speaker was a good way to go.
The week before Christmas we took the boys to the dollar store to do their Christmas shopping. I LOVE taking little kids to do their shopping because I love seeing what they come up with. Some of the best gifts were the dust masks Henry got for Stephen because he was running low and a Big Foot whistle that Jack got for Joelle. Hilarious! Jack also picked up these super cool shades for Ellie.
The gift Allen and I were most excited to give was our big family gift. For months we have been planning a trip to Europe with the girls. We will be going to London and Paris next summer. Since that is a little hard to wrap I got some charm necklaces for the girls with a London phonebooth, an Eiffel Tower and a little passport. I wrapped them all up in the same box and we had them open it together. Here is the moment they figured it out. (Contrary to how it looks, Jill is actually the one who figured it out first.) We are so excited!
Mini and Cooper got in on the fun too. Since we were staying at Joelle’s house we had to leave Mini behind. Clearly she was not going to miss us given all of the catnip we left behind. Cooper, though, got to come and he thoroughly enjoyed his stuffed toy which he quickly disemboweled.
We had a great time helping the boys put together their new Lego sets and fort kits.
The rest of the Jackson family came over in the afternoon for dinner. There was a little Christmas dance party, some sister pictures and an awesome dinner cooked by Stephen. And he only cut himself once!
Unbelievably we got a picture of the whole group. I say unbelievably because it was my Mom who requested the picture. She NEVER wants to be in pictures but her sister in Montreal had been requesting more photos. Thank you Murielle!
We had a great time all together and it was a lovely holiday. As my Dad always said…Onward and Upward.