I know that I usually take the time to blog on Tuesdays, but with this week being the week of Christmas, I figured I better take the time to do our weekly entry when I've got time!!

Our friends/next door neighbors invited us along with a few other friends over to their house for a Christmas party on Friday evening. A surprise guest was rumored to be coming as well and we were all excited! Benjamin and I baked eggless gingerbread cookies to decorate at the party and even decorated some of them beforehand to eat ourselves. Katie and Jason had quite a spread of goodies to eat and all of the kids enjoyed running around and decorating cookies. After dinner, a knock at the door signaled the important visitors - Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus!! The kind people willing to dress up and let our kids sit on their laps were the parents of Katie and Jason's live-in Nanny, Melissa (she also was one of Benjamin's teachers at daycare before she left to watch Ethan full-time). Some of the kids were more open to socializing with the Clauses than others, but luckily Benjamin was one of the more comfortable of the bunch. He was able to tell Santa what he wants for Christmas and Santa even had a couple of small fun gifts for him. It was a wonderful evening!!

On Saturday we received a sizeable amount of snow in a blizzard that lasted pretty much all day. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I think we have about 2 feet of snow on the ground around our house right now. So much snow has fallen that we have run out of room on either side of our driveway for the shoveled snow. Unfortunately, as Sunday approached, so did very very very cold temperatures and I think our high for today was -11 degrees with a -40 windchill. SICK! So we couldn't even enjoy all of that snow.

Even with the horrible weather, we still were able to get out and do some Christmas shopping, visit the library and have dinner out on Saturday. However, on Sunday with the cold temps we decided to just stay home and catch up on some projects. Mike reorganized some cabinets, Benjamin caught up on his artwork and I made 1/2 of a practice cake for Andy and Jennifer's wedding. It was a very productive day.

I know that I keep saying this, but I cannot believe how close the holidays are now. THREE days until Christmas! Ai yi yi!! It should be a fun one though, we are all excited. We still have some wrapping to do and I have to make some Andrzejewski meat pierogis to bring up to Mom and Dad's! Mmmmmm.