Getting Ready for Christmas Already!

As I'm doing my daily thankful Facebook posts, it's funny that I'm just now getting around to Christmas!  Usually I've garage saled like crazy and gotten everything I need by now.  Not so this year.  I've got zilch.  Zero.  Nada.  Nichts.  Nothing.  We have no extra money to work with, since everything I make goes to bills or gas.  I worked super hard with the kids to figure out exactly what they want/need!  I even made a google doc with links and everything (since my family is so awesome)!  And I'm super excited that all of my kids have agreed to let me make them a themed quilt for Christmas!  Using only the fabric I have now (which may or may not include previous blankets), I'm going to make each of my kids a blanket.  Ben wants a dragon with fire coming out of it's mouth.  Kira is getting an owl.  Emma wants a crazy detailed one that's never going to happen, so we'll see how that one goes!  Leah wants a butterfly.  Cecilia wants a flower.  Josh will probably get a car.  And Samuel will just get something.  Maybe a rectangle blanket with a big S on it.  Either way I'm excited for the challenge.  Not so excited for the amount of time I have.  Luckily I had already bought the pattern before the spending freeze (it was $6, but it's for the owl, flower and butterfly).  I, of course, will be making my own way with the pattern as a general help.  I also sketched out a quilt I want to make for the futon.  Me, I mean me.  It's a regular size quilt with a huge branch with 9 owls, 2 big and 7 varying sizes.  I'm going to use two shirts that each person has worn or grown out of to make an owl.  So, combination t-shirt quilt and owl quilt.  Maybe I'll finish it before my birthday.  :)  I also have a ton of worn out jeans to work with, so I'm going to be making cute jean purses/bags for my girls and jean roads for the boys.  I'll be using scholastic points and free book coupons to be getting some of their something to read presents.  I'm super excited!  I doubt I'll be sleeping much, but maybe I'll convince Scott to cut out pieces for me...
Monday was Cecilia's dental surgery which turned out pretty well!  Kim watched the kids and my Mom and Scott helped out Cecilia!  We all headed to my mom's house and got to celebrate her birthday a day early.  Cecilia recovered pretty fast (thankfully)!  We ate at Cracker Barrel, and I forgot to take pictures with this whole picture fiasco.  (I found out that some of my in-laws had complained about my pictures, so I haven't been taking near as many pictures and I haven't been posting them on Facebook, because I really don't want to subject them to my non-professional pictures. I've just been texting my pictures to my family, which works for me!)
Thursday night I got to go meet up with my parents and sister with Cecilia in order to get Dad's new Disabled Veteran's license plate on his car that we borrowed for most of this week.  We got pie.  Yum!
Friday was our Veteran's Assembly and my Mom and Dad got to come.  That was HUGE!!!  I was so excited that I talked to all of my third graders about my Dad and how important Veterans are!  I was a sobbing mess though!  My Dad cries about a lot of things now, it's one of the side effects, and I cry when I see someone else crying.  I was also crying for the thought that he might not be around next year for this.  And since Veteran's Day is his birthday, I'm going to assume that that day will not be happy for me.  But, he could live for a long time and I really shouldn't worry about it!  He's on God's time table!  Either way, my kids all saw me cry, but I don't think it was a bad thing.  I know that they all behaved amazingly well!  I was super impressed!  My kids all made a Thank you poster to Veterans, and a few of my kids had veterans to give them to, but most of them wanted to give it to my Dad (which I was secretly hoping for)!  They were so excited to see him!  I had tons of kids ask me which one was my dad!  I sure love my Dad and I'm so grateful that he was willing to come and Mom was willing to come with him!  It sure meant a ton to my kids!
In the meantime, we got to spend some time downtown yesterday, doing an Ornament Walk, or Scavenger Hunt as my kids called it.  We had to be one of the first 100 people to get a map, and then we walked around to twelve different stores and got a free ornament!  They're pretty cute ornaments too!  It took us two hours, but we got free food, free ornaments, free exercise, and some cute pictures!  My kids are all wanting homemade soap and Irish cream candles now.  They're awesome!
Then my parents came with my nephew and the kids all had a blast!  My kiddos were super excited about the groceries Mamaw brought back!  They have ready made snacks!  Dad and Scott worked on the van, but still don't know what's broke.  Bummer!  Kira and I did our weekly Saturday night drying clothes at the Laundromat.  Good times.  Then we got a phone call saying that we needed to get the stuff from the car we had borrowed, since nothing had been taken out.  Ooops!  So, Kira and I had the opportunity to drive halfway and meet my Mom and sister to get our stuff.  They're so sweet to meet us halfway!
  I figured out how to download some of my pictures from my phone, so enjoy!