The Day After

The tree is down, the decorations are put away, everything is back in its place...well, almost.   I know most people keep up their tree till the New Year.  Not me.  I've always taken it down the day after Christmas.  So has my mom, so maybe it's a family thing.  I love having everything put away and in it's proper place so I can enjoy some time with my kids.  Remember I'm a homeschool mom so it's my Christmas break too.  For me, the sooner I get the tree down and everything put away, the sooner I can sit back, relax and enjoy some family time.

After Christmas is over I get some boxes and make two stacks of new gifts.  Bethany's stack and Dakota's stack.  Then throughout the next week I take time to look at their new things individually with each of them.  After each item is looked at/played with by mom and kid it then gets put in it's place.  This is something I've always done.  We do it on Birthday's too.  The kids look forward to it and so do I.  It used to consist of playing hotwheels and remote control cars with Dakota and playing barbies and baby dolls with Bethany.  Now that they are getting older it consists of looking at books, watching movies, and playing video games. 

So this year for Dakota we will be watching his new Crabb Family dvd together, looking and discussing several books including a book on humility and George Bush's Decision Points.  He got a really neat sportsman camouflage Bible that I am thoroughly convinced that every sportsman should have.  It's even waterproof, supposedly even floats!  He also got several things for hunting so we will look at those together and hopefully he'll get to use some of it next deer season.  But mostly we will be looking at pictures.  He takes really good pictures of nature and he has photography blog that you can check out here.  His grandmother got him a new tripod, he got some camera cleaning supplies and his most favorite thing...Photoshop!  Here's an  example of some of the fun stuff he can now do.

With Bethany we will be looking at some books.  She loves the Life of Faith books and this Christmas she completed her collection. She was very excited about that!  She also got several Focus on the Family Radio Theatre productions.  We are almost finished listening to Anne of Green Gables then we'll start on Little Women or perhaps The Secret Garden which she received from her great grandma.  She also got the Anne of Green Gables dvd set and some paper dolls.  She loves paper dolls and has quite a collection.  One thing she'll have to wait to try out is her new sweep net.   This year in Science she has been studying insects and the one and only thing she really asked for this year was a sweep net so she could catch all kinds of bugs and butterflies.   We'll have to wait for spring on that.  Here's a picture of her opening up her Anne of Green Gables Focus on the Family from her Aunt Shelley.

As a family we'll be watching I Love Lucy!  We now have seasons 1 & 2 and have already shared several laughs while piled in bed together.  Also we'll try to solve some Brain Teasers together while playing Professor Layton and the Curious Village on the Nintendo ds.

Then when I am all done with that, I hope to have some time to myself so I can read.  I got several new books for Christmas.  My mom got me Serendipity by Cathy Marie Hake and my sweet Bethany got me A Guide to Deaf Ministry and Celebrating the Christian Year, both books that I really wanted.  

I can't end without mentioning the sweet gift that Dakota got for me.  He took a beautiful picture of a pink rose with water droplets on it and then he wrote a poem for me and printed it on the picture and gave me the framed work of art.  Needless to say I teared up when I read the poem.  It is a gift I will treasure forever.