Well the bags are mostly packed and the house is *mostly*clean. We head out tomorrow for Texas/DC. When we debated last year on when to go home and decided to save extra vacation time to do a longer trip now I was bummed to not go home for Christmas. But now that the time has come, I am so thankful we saved Seth’s vacation time and that we have long enough to recover from jetlag, see both sets of parents, some of our siblings, nieces, nephews and friends!  The trip with the boys is a bit daunting but I must admit that at this point we are both too excited to be thinking about how the boys will do. And may I unashamedly say that after hosting 26 house guests over the past 14 months that I am so excited to be a guest!!!! The thought of our moms cooking and me not cooking enjoying is so exciting!!!

Before we hit the road or rather the runway I wanted to post a few pictures from Jackson’s Christmas programs…one was a quick 5 songer at the preschool Christmas market on Sunday…

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jack with his teachers, Jamie, Fatima and Rachel

The second program was the church nativity that the kids acted out. Jackson started out as a shepherd and midway through the service before he went on stage I noticed he had talked the teacher into letting him “upgrade” to a wiseman!  It was a family service and the irony of it is that these family services are the toughest on families. Owen in particular. He just can’t sit for 1 hour and 45 mins plus. I peeled 4 oranges before leaving the house thinking I would sneak him a slice now and again to pacify him if things got desperate….he ate 2 oranges during the first song if this gives you any indication of how our evening went. We ended up slipping out before the sermon even began because Owen was beyond oranges, lights going off and on, and being held down and quiet.

shepherd turned wiseman