Vacation was wonderful. Honestly, it was more of a “staycation” and stay and cation I did. Scott redid all the plumbing in our house this past week. He also used his new Christmas gift-a smoker to make us dinner twice.  I, on the other hand, staycationed. And as I surveyed the house this morning, boy did it show. With Scott plumbing all week, I actually had a reasonable excuse for my laundry neglect.

I was so excited at the end of the year when I checked my earnings report from Amazon. Since my last update on Nov 8th, we earned $89.32 more! Thanks to all of you who clicked through my site first when doing your Christmas shopping at Amazon this season. I was so excited to make a donation to World Vision’s Sudan Food and Care fund for $180! Combined with the previous earnings, we have worked together to send ** $280 ** to aid the refugees in Sudan.

As 2009 came to a close, we spent some time as a family discussing the highlights. It really was a wonderful year! I feel so blessed for the many opportunities for family fun that we had in the past year. In January Scott and I were able to go to a Steelers home AFC championship and watch them beat the Ravens and make it to the Super bowl. Shortly after we hosted a Super bowl party with our family and watched our beloved Steelers bring home a 6th Super bowl victory.

As I was looking over the pictures we took on Christmas Day in order to make my collage, I commented to Scott that it appears I wasn’t there for Christmas morning as I couldn’t find any shots with me in them. Then I realized I was wrong as I spotted this picture. Whew…. good thing I was wrong… there is photographic evidence of my existence at Christmas 2009. :-)

Who me?  Couldn’t be Then, who? Visit here or here for more fun with pictures.

One of my favorite things we did this Christmas was take the kids shopping for each other and for us. It is heartwarming to see them get so excited about giving. I also loved seeing what they picked out for others. My son is an excellent gift giver. He is very thoughtful and thinks very hard about finding a gift the person will truly like. I just had to share the story Scott told me about taking him shopping for my gift.

We have had a wonderful couple of days here at the circus celebrating Jesus’ birthday. We decided to spread the celebrating out over several days rather than cram it all into one day. On Christmas Eve we went to the Children’s service at our church at 4:30. Then we went to Boston Market for our now traditional Christmas Eve dinner before heading back to church for the candlelight service at 6:30.

Only 2 days till Christmas and my to do list today looks like this. Clean bathroom- scrub toilet, scrub sink, scrub tub and tile (I write each individually so I can feel more satisfaction when I am done by crossing off 4 things instead of one) Clean guestroom- My parents always say, don’t worry or stress about cleaning up for them. And I appreciate the fact that I can keep things real and not stress out, but… I think I need to clear off a place for them to sleep, don’t you?

Megan is hosting her annual Sharing Christmas carnival where bloggers can invite their readers into their homes for a sort of Christmas Open House. I tend to use the same decorations each year in pretty much the same locations and since I posted on those here last year, I am not going to redo the same post. Instead I thought I would post on how things are different this year at the circus.