Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!  This is the picture that we have decided to use in our Christmas Cards this year!  We finally got them sent out today.  So if any of you reading this is on my mailing list this is the pic you will be getting... minus the text of course.  The pics came out great but with having 5 of us it was so hard trying to get one with us all smiling, looking decent, and looking the right way!  Tommy was a grump so I think he was smiling in only two of the pics.  And of course in this pic Mikey is being goofy.  Oh well... it is still a nice family pic.  Can you believe the last time we had "family pics" (other than setting my camera on a timer or having someone use my camera to snap a quick one of us) was in 2001!!! Mikey was 1.5 and Becca was 4.5!!  *sigh*  Jennifer (my friend that took the pics) was great and patient as usual!  She didn't even charge us but for the trouble of being short notice and knowing how busy she is I gave her what we could afford.  She did us a HUGE favor by doing them for us and I am SO thankful! 

I do want to share another pic that Jennifer took.  She took a "test" shot with Tommy  before we all starting getting pics done.  It came out really cute too...

Well we FINALLY got our Christmas Tree up!  LOL I know I know... it is 5 days before Christmas and I just now got it up.  I was so tempted not to put it up at all cause I would just have to take it right back down.  Oh well.. that just means that I only have a week and a half of fighting to keep Tommy away from it!  LOLBy the time we were done decorating it and such he was too tired to explore it that he just went to bed.  He was such a good boy while we decorated it and sat in his exersaucer and watched us.  Now I need to finish cleaning the house and decorating the inside.  I have a pile of Christmas cards that I need to put up on the wall.  I have been waiting to put them up until I had the rest of the decorations up.  In the meantime I am doing "okay" right now.  I don't feel so moody about it all, sometimes I think I work myself up SO much before hand that when the time actually comes to be upset about stuff it isn't so bad??  I dunno.  I know Christmas is going to be hard, but I think I have done most of my grieving about it already.  I think the hardest will be when I talk to Gramma on Christmas morning, and when all the festivities are done and there is nothing else left to do.

Becca didn't go to school today.  She woke up complaining of a sore throat and she had a really LOW grade fever.  If it wasn't that her tonsils were red and swollen I would have sent her to school anyways because she was acting FINE!   I called the dr and they couldn't get us in until almost 3pm.  So we went and sure enough she does have strep... but at the drs she didn't even have a fever, and it wasn't because I gave her tylenol or asprin... I don't give my kids fever reducing meds unless their temp is over 101, so I am hoping that we caught it early enough that the rest of us will miss it.   Boy is she milking it though.  LOL

I think that is all for now, I hope you have a VERY Merry Christmas if I don't get on here to post again before Sunday!  **HUGS**