Homemade Christmas

This year all the Atkinson Christmas presents were homemade. Karee learned some new sewing skills to make Jerel these new slippers. I'm so glad because his old ones are getting kind of crusty. Plus these are really roomy in the toes which will be good once our webbed feet grow back with all this rain we're having. I've never attempted a project like this so I was quite impressed. She also made me a scarf from the same soft material and it's great! Ryan & Karee also got us started on our Year's Supply of food. We haven't been good about getting that going, but Karee told us not to worry, we only need something like 420 more pounds of grain...

The best part was that I got pictures of ME for Christmas! Yipee! Seriously. I had this great idea once that Jerel and I would have a framed 4x6 or 5x7 snapshot from each year of our marriage and keep them on our dresser. It's like a walk down memory lane. Okay, it's still a really short lane since it hasn't even been three years, but I think it's a cool idea. So we have one from our honeymoon but then I got stuck. I knew Karee was super creative and talented and scrapbooky so this seemed like a perfect project, and she did a beautiful job! One is a picture of us at the French Open in 2007 (the only picture taken of us that whole year!) and she put cute little France button-ey things on it. The other is us at the Dome of the Rock earlier this year and she put darling sparkly flowers and also put the year on the frame, which I thought was great idea! I think I may have to number the backs of all the frames because I'm sure when I get old (in like 2 more years) I'll forget which picture is from which year. Anyway, I was absolutely delighted with what she did! I've already warned her that in 5 years when the gift rotation lines up with her shopping for us we'll have 5 more pictures for her to frame!

Let's see, what else. We got a cute winter outfit & a rattle for Paisley from Jeff & Nicole, lots of books for Paisley from Jerel's mom, darling Christmas decorations from Aunt Kay, a calendar from Jerel's mom, and a beatiful framed picture from Jerel's dad. I don't know how to describe it, it's not a picture. It has a drawing of each of the Prophets of our church from Joseph Smith all the way to Thomas S. Monson. I don't know how he got them so quickly since all you can currently get is through Pres. Hinckley, but it's beautiful.

Anyway, we had a great time visiting with everyone and are excited to come again next year and introduce Paisley to her 12 Atkinson cousins!