9 Days Til Christmas

Sometimes I think the good thing about winter is that you won't be awaken to the tweeting of birds at the crack of dawn. On the weekend. When you are *trying* to sleep in. BUT...if you live in a fairly wooded area, you might be woken up to the HOOTING OF OWLS! What the...is right. It was about 6 this morning. I actually thought it was Drew because he's been making this "Ooo Ooo" noise. Then I got up to go to the bathroom and the ooo's got louder. Weird, I thought. Then I started to wake up some more and realized there was a rhythm and pattern... and it was TWO owls hooting at each other! Well, now I was up and I listened to them for about 40 min. That's all I have to say about it - I thought it was pretty cool.

I don't have a lot of pictures of the kids...we've been incredibly busy and everytime I bring the camera out I get pictures like this:

 

The kids just want to play with the camera and are too distracted when they see it to "let" me take a nice picture of them! The rest of the pics are of Kelsey. I took her along with me to decorate my aunt and uncle's house for Christmas. The 3 traumatic and tragic deaths this year are all from the same family so we decided to do "backwards" Christmas (that's not actually the name, but I decided to make it "G" rated for the sake of the younger readers), take their favorite "colors" and use them to decorate the place we celebrate with that side of the family. 

Coloring

Holding mom's wine glass

Playing with baby Archar and Auntie Cassandra

 

And the finale - backwards Christmas could not be celebrated
without having an upside down tree! It is truly screwed
into the ceiling of their basement - decorated in purple for Sabrina,
red for Tom, and orange for my dad.



It will be a different Christmas where we all try to find a new "normal" without our loved ones. As we are still processing our own grief, I can't even begin to feel what is going on at the school and community in CT.

And here's my buddy eating a sandwich! He bummed around all day
with dad when Kelsey was with me. So smiley - he says "cheese" now
when he sees a camera.