Merry Christmas

The month of December went  by so fast! I can not believe that it is Christmas Eve and I have not blogged any of December! Well this month Abram finished his first semester of Grad school. He says it is hard, and I say it should be!!! He studies hard and is gone a lot, but I know that is how it should be. Still I can not wait until our days of schooling are over. It has been pretty nice though this past week because Abe is on semester break and has been home everyday. The girls love it, and so do I. However I become really lazy when he is home. I can not figure out why. When he is gone I seem to get the kids to bed on time, the home is clean, dinner put away, dishes done....... but when he is home I can not seem to keep on top of it!!

We have not gotten much snow here. It snowed very little one day and the only thing Piper really wanted for Christmas was snow. She said, "I guess this will have to do." It sure did not snow here like it did in Idaho! We are all settled in here, except for the fact that we still have no furniture! We just have not had the time to go anywhere to get any. But hey it makes the apartment look huge!!

Here are some pics from last week!

Parker!!! So stinking cute!

 Paislee, with a mouth full of candy, we were making gingerbread houses

 Piper

 My sister Brittany made all my kids these really cute hats

Phoebe

I have to write a little special blurb about our Christmas Eve this year. It was a lesson for me, and it makes me look really bad. I call it who am I to judge another.... So our downstairs neighbors have some pretty heavy smokers. Everyday without fail, almost anytime we leave someone is out their smoking, or has just gotten done having a smoke. It fills the hallways, and often times finds its way into our apartment. I have often thought, how rude! can't you do that out back, do I have to smell your habit!!! They also hack all night long so on and so on. Based on this and a few other things I judged them to be very grungy, yucky kind of people. Well last week one of the downstairs neighbors knocks on my door and tells me that their is water dripping from her ceiling, and if she could come in and see if my sink was leaking, it was, it got fixed and that was that. Well tonight she knocks on our door and tells us that Santa made a special trip to see the kids this year and if we would bring ours down to see him!

I was surprised and said of course! Piper had been asking all month to go see Santa, and she never failed to let me know how put out she was that I did not take her to see him. I still struggle to get anywhere in an orderly manner with all four kids, and I was not up to standing in line with all of them. Anyways we went down stairs and there was Santa. He was good with all the kids and chatted with all of them. She also had gifts for all my kids. While the kids were opening their gifts I noticed they were getting lots of books and school activities.She even had cute little baby things for Parker. I said to her husband, we love books. He said I know, my wife said that when she went to your apartment last week to check about the water leaking she noticed you had baskets of books, and that your oldest one was working on her ABCs at the table! I sort of just stared at him, as all my judgments about them kept going through my head. The wife told me that it must be hard on the kids moving from Idaho and that in passing Piper had told her that she did not get to see santa this year! How thoughtful it was of her to invite us down to their home with their family on their Christmas Eve! And to buy my children gifts too! They may be smokers, they may swear, and be covered in tatoos, but tonight they were far more Christ like then me. I was humbled by this and by the fact that while I sit and complain about the dog barking and the loud coughing, they never have said a word about the running of feet across the floor, or screaming children. They have only ever said nice things to us and about our family! Lessen learned!!

Merry Christmas everyone!!