(I named this post before I added the color photos. The black and white images are all the way at the end…)

Steve and I have always made the trip home to visit family for Christmas which means that our boys always made that trip as well. Steve and I go to Oklahoma City on the 23rd to visit my mom and sister. Now that they are married, the trip north is a little more complicated for the boys. They stay in Sherman for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with their respective in-laws.

On Christmas day around lunch time they (with wives and children in tow) drive north to Steve's mom and dad's house for the big dinner and festivities. It's not just our family but Steve's brother and sister's families too. The house is full to the brim and the presents take over the living room!

I didn't take enough pictures – I chose to enjoy the party instead. But that's Jeff and Chris, above, and Steve with our neice Rachel, who has a catering business, busy in the kitchen.

On the day after Christmas the kids do some more visiting and eventually we all end up back home in Texas. We do our family celebration (with presents!) on New Year's Eve. I've gotten to the point that it feels natural to spread out the Christmas celebration. In fact it's nice to still have New Year's Eve to look forward to.

The image below may seem unrelated to Christmas but it isn't for us. This is the chandelier that hung in my Grandmother's bedroom. It belongs to my sister now and we moved it for her from one place to another on the 24th. I cleaned that thing as a child and I did it again last week. Every time I re-hang those strands of crystal I am reminded of how pretty it is. It reminded me again that it's family and tradition that make the holidays special.

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas!

You know that orange tree I brought inside? It's dropping leaves AND flowering! If you look real close you can see a part of a red ornament in the upper right corner of the photo. I decided to decorate it this Christmas because I don't have a lot of luck with potted plants. Who knows – it might be happy and that's why it's flowering!

I hope each and every one of you has a merry Christmas! If you celebrate a different holiday – I hope you have a lovely celebration as well!

Steve has been joining planks…

And filling holes…

There is sanding and stipping the legs of the table and much more but he is making progress!

But I am gaining on it. Judy (the other grandmother) and I worked with Elanor and Jack today on our annual let's-help-the-kids-make-presents day. We both thought this was the best year yet. I'm going to share with you in case you are needing some last minute kid present ideas.

Elanor made pinecone Christmas tree ornaments. She helped with the spray painting of the pinecones. She painted the tips white. She went back and painted the tips with glue and sprinkled them with glitter. We worked together on the pipe cleaners. Way cute!

Way back, when Jeff was 3, he made us a toilet paper tube angel. I've loved that angel and it's on the shelf in my dining room every day, next to the one Elanor made one with me and Judy when she was 3. I wish I had one for Christopher, but I don't.

Today was Jack's turn. We couldn't find any white toilet paper tubes so Elanor helped out by painting the brown tubes white. Instead of painting on the cheeks, Judy put on dots of glue and Jack sprinkled glitter. The noses were his idea and he was right – they are better with noses!

And then there's this:

My mom has a my brother's handprint from way back when with the poem you see above. I made one like this with Christopher's handprint when he was 4. How did I miss getting Jeff's handprint? I have no idea. But today, Judy and I got both Elanor and Jack's handprints immortalized on paper for their mom and dad.

Please notice that Elanor at 8 and Jack at 3 have nearly the same size hand. Oh my. I knew the boy was big, but really. He's a big kid!

I think the main reason Steve loves a new project is that it often means that he needs a new tool. I'm good with that because I need new sewing tools pretty often too!

His new tool is a power planer. I thought planers were only hand driven but, no, that is not the case. He cut the airplane hanger floor planks (see previous post) to a uniform length and placed them on the frame he made. He's pretty proud of that frame and he should be. This is the platform that he'll use to glue together the boards and it will keep everything level.

That's the very fine power planer in his hand (below). It's loud and it spits out LOTS of sawdust. You can set the depth of the cut. He's taking off 1mm.

Look down the length of the board behind the power planer. You can see the clean pine. Under other circumstances I might not want to take off so much of the wear/character of these boards but there is probably a lot of machine oil in the wood. I'm afraid the polyurethane won't adhere well if that's not taken off.

The change in the look of the wood is kind of amazing! Steve says I'll be staining and polyurethaning before we go to OKC on the 23rd. He's got a lot of glueing and sanding between now and then. I'll post more photos as he makes progress. We have a party here on New Year's Eve and I really hope we have the new table in place for it :-).

It's nice looking, don't you think? Every now and then a passenger has to climb out of, or into, the pickup at this point on the driveway. Used to be, you stepped onto dirt or mud. Now there's rock there. Decorative AND functional! And the stuff that looks like hay – that's the new mulch.