Caught up with my December Daily!

And the last post... All caught up now! Yay!

Day 19, our bedtime ritual

Day 19, inside the flap

Day 20, loving the lights and the tree

Day 21, it's all about the lights right now, sparkly lights are the best!

Third post - December Daily

Oh, hello Day 8! You were hiding... 

Day 18 - really love how this one turned out and especially since I didn't even put that much thought into it (until the journaling, of course)

Day 18, second side of photo

Day 18, the little letters I wrote each kid... Agus page 1

Agus page 2

Nico page 1

Nico, page 2

December almost over - second post

Blogger really doesn't like it when I try to add too many pictures to a post. Guess I'll split it up a bit!

Day 14

Day 15

Day 16, the Novena starts

Day 16, with the flap opened

Day 17, got the beard hats finished! They are soooo much fun, but a little too hot, I'm told.

December, you're almost over! :(

Wow, how time flies! It's so cool looking back on how we've been celebrating the holiday. I saw this quote today, and it really resonated with me.

The man of our time is losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating, he seeks to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.

~Abraham Joshua Heschel from “Who Is Man?”

Here's to more celebrating!

Day 9 - dreaming of snow a little...

Day 9, with the flap opened up. I love those mini pictures.

Day 10, Love these photos that capture the ornaments on the tree, too. Each one has its own story.

Day 11, second page. Oh blogger, why do you make it so hard to add photos? Anyway, once the chocolate advents are empty, we'll be adding bits of the boxes to this side.

Day 11 - all about our advent calendars.

Day 12, a little Christmas shopping

Day 13

Day 13, with the little flap opened.

Our December so far...

So, with or without a camera, I'm doing my December Daily! Because I prepped all the inner pages before December 1st, it really doesn't take me longer than ten minutes to slap this together - not counting the photo printing time. That is taking a bit longer, the way I've got it set up is a bit laborious (at some point, ask Andrés for the iPhone when he's not using it or the computer -- link up the iPhone and load the pics I want -- edit them if I have Instagram pics I want and then save as PDFs and then as JPGs -- get onto the flash drive -- go upstairs and print them out on the mini printer my AWESOME sister Amy gave to me last year). That is the part that takes a good 20 minutes or so, although I do try to multitask while waiting for things to upload and whatnot. But it is SO. WORTH. IT. to have the pictures ready to go and print at home. I am feeling quite spoiled...

So here is a bit of our first week of December, starting on the second, where I left off! (If you click on the picture I think it should open bigger if you want to read the journaling. Not super inspired but sometimes it is more about getting it done! And in a year I never notice or think of it as "uninspired" - even if it's just a line or two I have loved looking back on the last four years. So many memories, big and small and even minuscule.)

Day 2: A few pictures from our Nativity scene, upstairs on the third floor (before we got Mary and Joseph in there. Oh, we also have the Baby Jesus - but he's covered up because he cannot make his appearance until the 25th!).

Day 3: A little bit of the everyday homework side. It seems repetitive now, but someday it won't look like this anymore, so I want to get the little details. And I think it's kind of fun to read each year and compare - what was different, what was the same, what repeats and what doesn't. (I suspect the days of being able to help Agustín with Math homework are numbered.)

Day 4: New haircuts for everyone, and a much happier Mommy. I really do not like having long hair. And I don't think I ever will. Hello shoulder-length hair - I heart you!

If you open the little flap that the "4" is on, there is a bit more journaling and a picture of the Christmas basket we received tonight.

Day 5: A Christmas movie night. I really love "Elf". And I always get a little teary-eyed at the end. (I know, I am such a dork! I can't watch a movie anymore without crying - either because it is tender or sweet or really so very horrible - recently saw "The Candidates" and "That's my Boy" and lost hope for the human race for a good two or three hours. Sorry.)

Day 6: Viva Quito! Quito celebrates the foundation of the city today and while Andrés and I had vacation, the kids - strangely enough - did not. So while they slaved away at school, we went downtown. All the museums were free and there were a lot of people by 10 a.m. We made it to the City Museum for the first time and really wished the kids had been with us. Very cool. Didn't really feel like Ecuador :)

Day 7: I love sitting by the tree with candles lit and just staring at it, or reading (of course). Today was one of those days. We had to go back to work after yesterday's holiday, but it's the weekend, so it didn't matter. Of course the weekend will be busy, but tonight...just me and Andrés and the boys and the tree. (And the Osmonds - always the Osmonds.)

If you open the flap where the journaling is, I have another (repeated) picture underneath. Looking at this right now I suppose I need something on the back side of that goldish paper...

My Poor, Lost Camera

It is still nowhere to be found. I think I might have done one of four things:

1. Lost it while we were downtown and stopped for coffee (It's the last time I remember actually having it. I didn't bring my purse that day, and had it in my hands, wrapped around my wrist all morning, so I think I would have realized if it had gone missing, but...)
2. Left it in the taxi we took to get back from downtown that day.
3. Left it sitting around somewhere at work, where it proceeded to get stolen.
4. Packed it up in the Christmas decorations boxes, which are now snug and safe under the stairs and will NOT be taken out until after the New Year.

So far, Nico is helping me keep up with the photos (using his camera, our old camera, but it is taking blurry shots!) and when I can I use Andres's iPhone - which is his real phone (obviously) and which prevents me from carrying it around everywhere I go and taking inane pictures of my shoes or what I ate in the mornings.

I am a bit quite depressed over this. Seriously thinking of getting another one - maybe I can buy one online with my new PO Box! - but knowing that as soon as I do that, I'll find it in my underwear drawer or some place it would have been out in the open.

So that's my update, and why pictures have been few and far between. I am still keeping up with my December Daily, however, and plan to scan in some images tonight to show what we've been up to :)

Just excuse the poor quality of the photos (although the iPhone pics are terrific).

Hello December Daily!

December is finally here and so is my Christmas spirit! I was so excited to get started on Christmas that we did quite a bit yesterday. I'd better slow down or I'll run out of speed before we're halfway to the big day!

We started the day with some crafts. We did some Christmas crafts (the Santa beard faces in my previous post) and some resist techniques paintings I found from Illustration Friday for Kids. It got a bit intense and took the entire morning, but the kids had so. much. fun. And we hadn't done an arts n' crafts day in a really long time.

I finished the Christmas decorating - mainly the kids' mini tree and stockings. Once they got their rooms decorated, I got everything put away and stored and it finally looks so festive in the house! Woohoo!

Day One of my December Daily goes like this:

I'll probably do something on the other side a la Ali Edwards - I want to print out the PNG file she's got  on her web site. I think covering up those big black ink spots would be a good thing.

The tag says (on the other side): "The Christmas decorating got finished up today - now the house really FEELS like Christmas! The finale was the tree the kids put up in their room. There are battery powered mini lights on it this year!"

And I should mention that I'm pretty sure I have lost the camera. For good. I've looked all over all week and it is nowhere to be seen. Andrés was at work all day so I didn't have the iPhone, so Nico actually took the pictures in the album with his camera (my old one that is "broken" and has no flash). They were a bit blurry but better than nothing :)

And I got the cover done - it turned out SOOOO ugly but I had fun. Oh well. Used materials I had around the house so I guess if I cared that much I would have thought a bit more about what I wanted and gone shopping :)

Today we had a similar day. So pumped up from the crafts day yesterday, Agustín came up to me after lunch and whispered in my ear that we should do more Christmas crafts. So we did - got the popsicle sticks painted for the sleigh ornaments and made some pom pom ornaments. That didn't really turn out. Sometimes Pinterest makes me think I have super powers. I don't. I actually suck at crafting pretty bad. But I figure the more we do it, the better we'll all get, so we continue to forge on.