Countdown to Christmas: Day 0

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Merry Christmas!!

From the Kawell Family

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Countdown to Christmas: Day 1

It's Christmas Eve! We're are having our Christmas party right now, so this will be short. Today, we played some football and watched some football (Bears win again!). We finished our work yesterday, so it was a quiet day. Everyone has had a great day! Hope everyone has had a great day too, and we'll see you tomorrow!!!

Countdown to Christmas: Day 2

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve! Today will be a busy day as we prepare for the weekend. We will be having a Christmas Eve party at our house with some friends of ours, so we will be cleaning the house and getting ready for the holiday. Last night, we went to see a house near by that has it Christmas lights set to music. We saw something similar at the zoo, but this house had more songs. I'm sure many of our readers have seen videos of such houses. They're pretty cool.

Sneak peek: After Christmas, and after the Christmas pictures are posted, we will be posting random pictures of 2006. It has been a fun year, and we would like to share it with our readers as we get nearer to 2007.

Countdown to Christmas: Day 3

10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...

Christmas is coming fast!! Yesterday and the day before, we did a lot of shopping, and today we finished. There are some excited people in this house! Tuesday evening (19th) we went to the Birmingham zoo where they have the whole place covered in Christmas lights. They even had one section set up so that the lights blinked in time to music! It was great.

Again, pictures are coming on to the camera very fast and I haven't even got them off yet, so pictures will be late in coming. I might have a chance to get some posted tomorrow, but if I don't do so, you'll have to wait until after Christmas. Sorry...

Countdown to Christmas: Day 6

The "Countdown to Christmas" posts have been a lot of fun and we will continue to try and post up until Christmas. However, this is a warning that as the days get busier as Christmas gets closer I don't know how often we will get a chance to post. The pictures that we've been promising may not get on here till after Christmas unless I get some time to get them together. We've had good responses to the Countdown, and I'll try to keep posting, but I can't promise anything!

Countdown to Christmas: Day 7

Goodness, when was the last time we updated?! Christmas is coming in fast and we are scrambling to get ready. On Wednesday, we went to a walk-through-nativity at Briarwood church. We have been doing this for years. They have scenes from Christ's life from the prophets to the resurrection with actors and lots of live animals! We did take some pictures and we will try to put them up before Christmas!
Merry Christmas!!

Countdown to Christmas: Day 12

The twelve days of Christmas have started! Get out your partridges and pear trees! This is one of our newer traditions. The basket with the straw in it symbolizes the manger were the Baby Jesus slept on the night of his birth. It is hard to see in this picture, but in the corner there is a little pail of straw. Whenever someone in the family does a voluntary good deed for someome else they can privately put a piece of straw in the basket. On Christmas morning, Mama puts a doll in the basket to symbolize Jesus sleeping on our good deeds!

Countdown to Christmas: Day 13

Finally, I found the camera and took some Christmas pictures around the house. Here are a few.

This is the fireplace, which, when I took the picture, had a roaring fire inside it which I carefully prepared, but, of course the fire doesn't show up in the picture.

This is one of our Nativity scenes. The three black and gold figures crawling up the the manger are clay figures of Frisky, Minnie May and Jiggs; our three dogs. It has become a family joke to have Frisky (who loves to cuddle) crawl closer to the Baby every day!

This is our advent wreath. Three of the candles have now been lighted! For some reason the wreath was on the banister when I found it for the picture.

Mama had this wonderful idea a few years ago to wrap up all the main picture frames in the living room. A lot of work, but aren't they beautiful?

Happy thirteen days 'till Christmas!

Countdown to Christmas: Day 16

We had a hard freeze last night, and found water frozen solid this morning. I (Abigail) had to break a thick layer of ice in the dogs' water bowl so that they could get a drink this morning. Christmas secrets are flying around and we're burning logs almost faster than Jesse can chop it. There is something warming about a fire that even our heating system can't compete with!

Countdown to Christmas: Day 17

The air has turned Christmas-y!! This morning the temps got down to 19 degrees (which is cold down here, for you northern folks!). The fireplace is doing its job and hot chocolate is flowing. We hope everyone is having a great season so far!

(More pictures coming...)

Countdown to Christmas: Day 19

Last night we lit the second candle of Advent. We have been busy makeing gifts for everyone on our list. Many of our readers will receive them. We'll have more decoration pictures later.

Countdown to Christmas: Day 20, Part II

This is a follow-up to the last post. We will be posting pictures of our decorated house as parts of some of the future "Countdown to Christmas" posts. Here's the first one:

Countdown to Christmas: Day 20

We are hoping to put some pictures up of our house all 'dressed up' for Christmas! Mama does such a wonderful job every year! Everyone seems to enjoy the decorations so much that we thought our readers might like to see it too, since not everyone can visit this time of year. I (Abigail) will try my hardest to get some pictures today. (Maybe promising will help motivate me!)

Countdown to Christmas: Day 21

Before I go into Christmas stuff, I just want to tell everyone that Mama is doing great after her minor surgery to remove bone spurs in her shoulder. If you didn't know about this, it's because it was a minor thing.

Well, yesterday we had church and, of course, sing plenty of Christmas songs. As a family we are learning great 4 part harmony: Abigail sings soprano, Mama sings alto, Sam is learning tenor, and I (Jesse) sing bass. It is beautiful to hear, and especially fun with all the wonderful Christmas songs.

I must mention that yesterday (Sunday) the Chicago Bears clinched the division title and will be going to the playoffs!! Go Bears!

Countdown to Christmas: Day 23

Nathan has a Lego advent calender which he is using to count the days until Christmas. His calendar gave me an idea to put a countdown on the blog. We'll just post small things that are going on in our lives as we near Christmas. The posts won't be long, they'll just have a small tidbit of our holiday preparation. We'll see if we remember to update it!

One Year

Somehow we missed it. On November 22, our blog celebrated its 1 year anniversary! This site has been a wonderful place for us to tell whats been going on in our lives, so our friends don't have to wait for the Christmas letter to learn. We hope to continue making this a fun vist for everyone. Thanks for reading!!!


(We just switched our blog to a updated version of Blogger, that's why it looks a little different. Everything works like it used to, it just looks different.)

Thangsgiving Pics

When I looked through the pictures of Thanksgiving I was very disapointed at how few pictures there were. Thus, dispite the name of this post, there are more pictures of us decorating the tree than of Thanksgiving. Enjoy...

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This is the only picture of the food (that isn't too blurry, that is). It was all good and so I'm sure we didn't get pictures because it was gone before we could.

Here's Evie!! She's always the superstar.

So much good food leaves so much hard work. Thanks Abigail!

Beautiful sunset Thanksgiving evening.

The day after Thangiving we always get the Christmas tree. Here we go...

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