Story of our Lives: Merry Christmas to All...

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday!!! Thank you so much for all of the Christmas cards and gifts. The boys are so thrilled with all of their new gifts and I am so grateful for everyone's thoughtfulness and generosity. It was a bittersweet Christmas this year for my family. We had a very emotional, tough Christmas Eve. Some of you know what happened, and I am choosing not to disclose anything on my blog, for privacy reasons, and those who do know, I ask you to please respect our privacy and not share it with the world. I know it is unfortunate that I am writing that, and it is not out of distrust, I just feel the need to say it to respect our feelings. I do want to say thank you VERY much to those who were so supportive and who stayed on the phone with me, and who helped out. To you, I am forever grateful and I am always amazed by the selflessness and fast acting nature of people in a tragedy, and it touches my heart in a way I can not describe. We are, again, so grateful.
Christmas Eve, the boys and I did end up going to my mom's house. Although the visit was brief, the boys and I had a great time. Thank you for everything!!! Christmas morning the boys got up early, but not too early (7:30 am) and as our tradition goes, I went downstairs to make sure Santa came, and got the video camera ready to go. The boys were so happy with all of their toys. They then helped hand out gifts and opened their presents from us and from our family that does not live around here. Again, they were SO excited and happy with everything. This year Nathan's parents had taken the older two boys out to pick out gifts for each other and for Nathan and I, and after they were done opening their gifts, they were equally excited to have us open ours. Nate got me a Christmas mug for my hot chocolate (an afternoon treat we share together) and a Christmas plate. Ty had made a really cute necklace at his school for me, and also picked out some earrings, and a little jingle bell bracelet. It's nice to know he associates jewelry with girls!!! It was so wonderful to see what they picked out for each other too. Their gifts to each other were actually really well thought out, and they got each other things that they knew the other would really want. I am so happy to have such thoughtful boys!
I spent the rest of our free time Christmas morning opening all the boxed gifts and getting them in the trash and am very proud to say before we left for Nathan's parents' house, all the gifts were opened and put away where they belong, and all the trash was out. Yay me! We spent the afternoon at Nathan's parents house and had a great time. Again, thank you all so much! Nathan and I had two of my close friends, Kerrie and Kristina, over that night, and Nathan's brother Adam came upstairs with us and we all played games and just had fun. I must say, being the only one not to have wine last night, I will be VERY glad when I can again enjoy a glass. I could have used it after the past few days we had. I am glad I got to add to my wine cork collection though... I only have about a hundred and fifty more before I'm done, and even then I think I'll still collect them to start to make the boards for others. So once again, if you open a bottle of wine, think of me if it has a real cork and put it aside for me!!! I actually get really excited about them, and love adding them to my bag. For those that are wondering what the heck I'm talking about, I have a bag of real wine corks (not the plastic ones) that I am adding to always to make a real wine cork-board. A project I've been working on for about a year now.
Anyways, I again, want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! Thank you, thank you, thank you for EVERYTHING!!!! Enjoy the pictures.