At least it's not a week earlier

Okay, so I counted myself quite lucky that we had no sick children throughout the whole Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas folderol, and now I'll just say, "At least it's just the boys . . ." Yes, we finally got sick, but we caught it pretty early, because Isaac could have developed pneumonia from his lung infection, but we had him in to the dr. just hours after a fever popped up, and Adam really only has a cold, it's just exasperated by his asthma. It could be worse, and with all the medications, I think we're doing pretty well. So I really can't complain. Happy New Year!

Steedman family Christmas party 2007

Each year my first cousins once removed and their children, my second cousins, throw an awesome Christmas party. I've been attending as long as I can remember, and am happy that I'm still invited. Festivities include dinner, bingo, a nativity, and a visit from Santa. Here are

some of the pictures Nathan took. You will notice that Isaac was a wise man and Emily was Mary (Adam was supposed to be a shepherd, but he decided he'd rather just watch). The party provides some wonderful holiday memories each year.

A funny thing happened . . .

Okay, so my next blog was going to be about Emily's Christmas program she did with her theatre group, but you can see that it didn't happen, so here's the story. We purchased a live Christmas tree for our living room, as is customary, and brought it home, placed it in its stand, filled it with water, and I went to decorating. We placed it in the stand hastily, however, and did a rather poor job getting it centered. I would explain the intricacies of our tree stand, but you would be bored, and I really don't want to, but suffice it to say that not having it centered well would pose some problems that evening. Emily was at her performance, Nathan was at Young Women in Excellence, and the boys were in the tub. Eliza was sitting in her bouncy seat watching me put up the village and get everything plugged into the power strip. I heard a clicking sound which told me that the lock on the tree stand had come undone, and I knew what would happen next. Unfortunately I was on the backside of the tree, and the tree fell forward, towards Eliza. She was at least far enough away that it didn't land on her, but the water from the stand ended up all over. Only a few ornaments broke, and most even stayed on the tree, but I was stuck holding up the tree, and I wasn't sure how I would get help. I carefully balanced the tree upright and ran for the phone. Nathan was done with his meeting, so he agreed to come help. The end result is that everything got put back together, and dried, but since Nathan was helping me, he missed getting to Emily's performance in time to get pictures of her in the finale, thus there was no blog about said performance. See, I had a point. The show, which we saw the night before, was excellent and heartwarming, and you can rest assured that Emily was darling and did her part perfectly. Anyway, you can see the tree instead of Emily, because it was the tree's fault (okay not really) that we got no pictures of her.