Preparing for Christmas and hello iMac

I am yet again way behind and have hundreds of photos to sort through and share. My latest excuse is I got myself an iMac for Christmas, my birthday and for next Christmas (it is quite a large gift...in price and size... so it needs to span over sereval holidays:)) The iMac took a few weeks to get ramped up for blogging showtime with all the photos/software to be loaded...not to mention my learning curve...heck I've been a PC user/lover from the begining and swore I would never go back to Apple (I did have an Apple II GS when I was like 8) HA! It would be really comical I think for an Apple user to have watched me over the past couple weeks struggle with the basics. It has really humbled me to say the least. I mean it took me and Jeff working as a team 10 minutes to figure out how to maximize a window...awesome...that's all I have to say about that. The point is...this is the first post published from my Mac. After much research and 3 free trials later, I chose to use Ecto as my blogging editor (Windows Live Writer is by far better but ecto seems to do the job fairly well...at least better than blogging directly into Blogger).

So this was one of the busiest Christmas's here at the Lees. We had lots of events, preparations, visitors and friendly get togethers.

This was taken and Shannon and Ryan's house. They had the Kippers, Lecia and Brad over for a really yummy holiday feast. Here are the Kipper kids (Chance and Heidi) posing with Aston and Mei.

Emi's mom Denise had the great idea of having playgroup at the mall so we could take a group photo of the kids with Santa. I am pretty sure Aston and maybe Ava were the only 2 who were not brought to tears by the sheer presence of Santa so Santa brilliantly walked away from the area and snuck back behind the chair when we were ready for the picture. BRILLIANT! Look at the tears in Maisie's eyes...


Aston and BB making Christmas cookies for the much anticipated Christmas program at Aston's school...They made sugar cookies and snicker doodles with red and green sprinkles. Aston was the designated sprinkler...BB did all the hard work and I watched:)

Gram came to visit the week before Christmas and brought Stellyn's stocking made by GG Sybil (Great Grammy Sybil). GG Sybil has made all of our stockings using the same pattern over the past 50 + years...really amazing to have. Stelly is sporting her "my first Christmas socks"...Gram brought them for her along with MANY other fun items for Christmas.

On Thursday, the day after Gram arrived, Aston had his Christmas program...I am telling you this event was on my calendar the day I found out about it and I counted down the minutes. Aston certainly made it live up to all the hype. BB, Babs, Gram, Jeff, Stell and I were all in attendance. Aston is hiding behind Ms. Sallie a little in this photo and you can see friends Olin, Mia, Isaiah, Ainsley, Kate (back turned) and Lina in order to the right of him. To the left of him...Hollyn, Avery, Finn (Griffin and Sarah Scott are hiding somewhere in there)

Here's where the show begins notice how way into this thing Kate, Isaiah and Aston are...so funny...

video 1 of the event...

video #2...here the other classes joined in and Aston starts to loose interest

video #3

Then back to the classroom for a little lunch and party time. This is where the kiddos usually sit for lunch I think. I love that I got Aston, Mia, Griffin and Kate Kate way in the back in this photo. Notice Kate and Aston sitting at different tables...Ms. Patti told me this is done on purpose. The 2 of them together is bad news...trouble makers I guess...makes me laugh.

Then back to the house to open some of Gram's gifts for the kids. We spread them out throughout her stay so nobody was overwhelmed. On this particular gift opening session Aston got his very own hard hat full with a light on the side. He loves the thing and thinks it's great fun to put it on his sister's head (she's amused by it too btw). Mei opened a soft baby doll from Gram too but it's not shown...that reminds me, we still need to give her a name.

Whenever aston tries on anything or gets anything new (apparel-wise) he runs into our bathroom and pulls out his stool to check himself out...

The Friday before Christmas was the last day of Gymnastics for the fall session. This is Aston's favorite/most talked about activity we do. Often he will ask "is it Fridays Mommy?" "Fridays I go to nastics and see Kate Kate and Mia and Miss Kathryn and Miss Anne and get red chips". We all go next door to the YMCA deli to get lunch afterwards. He get's Doritos for lunch (yes I feed him "red chips" every Friday and he loves it) and a hotdog...it's the routine and I don't see it changing for a very long time. The 3 of them have a blast "doing" lunch together and sharing what they feel like and not sharing what they don't want to. The best part is listening to the 2 years old conversations they have...fun fun. The new session started last week and now we have even more friends attending Friday "nastics"...looking forward!
Notice Kate wearing her name tag from Childwatch and Aston dangling from the high bar (this is the most "nastics" he does btw...usually he is racing cars down the mats that are sloped like a ramp:))

Aston and Mia sitting on Mama Kathryn with the candy cane Ms. Shauna (gymnastics teacher) gave him...After gymnastics we went over to the Willettes for an ornament exchange...the kids gave each other some really fun and creative ornaments...I didn't get any good photos unfortunately.

Here's Aston gearing up to deliver the presents we bought for his Habitat for Humanity Angel (2yr old Scott). We purchased Scott an electronic guitar, a small monster truck and a large monster truck, a track suit and a rugby shirt for Christmas. I'm not sure he fully understood why we were giving gifts another little boy just like him (we explained that Scott "needs toys more than Aston does" but in his mind he "needs toys" too:)) He was very good about helping me deliver it and saying "Merry Christmas" to the lady accepting the gifts...