Break Time

I have zero pictures to share.  I'm hoping that means that I've been living in the moment and too busy to snap a picture.  Or else it means I've been too busy and completely forgot.  Either way, there were some things I wanted to remember, even without a picture.

We hosted a Christmas party for our small group last week.  We cooked dinner and a couple friends brought dessert.  As we sat around our dinning room table, I realized how sweet it was to have everyone there.  I've prayed over our small group for years and it was cool to sit back and see where we've come over time.

Alison's last day of school was Friday.  She said that Ms. Lyons (her 1st grade teacher) called her out of class to say goodbye and asked if she would continue to write to her.  Alison immediately wrote a note and asked to mail it.  Her current teacher, however, only told her to clean out her desk.  I wrote him a letter, but never received a response, so I'm supposing we've offended him by pulling Alison out.  Even if he is offended, I would hope he could be mature enough to give her a proper goodbye.  I set up a little party for Alison when she got home and we had "mud pie" (i.e. chocolate pudding with crushed up oreos and gummy worms).  Our neighbor came over for the party and the girls had fun playing.

Ben and I celebrated 11 years of marriage on Saturday!  We went to Vintage Tavern for dinner, for the 3rd straight year.  But this year was different.  Same place, even the same table, but this year Ben made me a bracelet with all the kids names and birthdays engraved on it.  In 11 years, this is the first anniversary present!  After dinner we bought stocking stuffers for the kids and quickly felt pathetic walking through Walmart on our date.

Story behind the bracelet: I always mix up the boys birthdays and 99% of the time I write it down wrong at the doctor's office.  I've heard countless times, "No Mrs. Shear, that is not your son's birthday".  It's so bad that Ben had to put a reminder in my phone for Colin's birthday.  It's embarrassing, to say the least.  One day I was so fed up with getting it wrong and afraid that I would teach them their own birthday's wrong or even worse, completely forget it.  I decided that I was just going to have to get it tattooed on my wrist.  I'm not a tattoo person, but I was just going to have to buck up and get it done, so I would just have to look down at my wrist when someone asked me one of the boys' birthdays.  Thus, the bracelet is Ben's beautiful way of giving me a reminder without permanent ink.

Christmas Eve is tomorrow and I don't have a single gift wrapped!