We had a lovely Christmas. In fact, I think it is one of the best Christmases we have had. John is unemployed and has not had a paycheck since September. We did not think that we would have much if anything for Christmas. But lot of very kind people helped us either by buying gifts on the kids gift list or by giving us money. My parents bought each of our 7 children 2 very nice gifts. John's sister, Mary sent us a $50 Wal-mart gift ard (They are and have been very poor. We know this was a sacrifice for them.) John's sister Emily and her family gave us around $800 for bills and presents. (We know that they had to dip into their savings for this.) John's brother James sent him some nice things too. We also had a very nice gift from John's sister, Amy. My sister Amy paid our rent for January. We have experienced a lot of miracles this Christmas season and because of the love and sacrifice of our family members, we had a very nice Christmas.
Here's a bit of what we did:
On Christmas Eve we went to Grandma Robertson's with all of the cousins for a BIG yummy breakfast, sledding, graham cracker house building, and visiting. It was really fun. Then we had a dinner at our house with Uncle Seth. Seth left promptly after dinner, and we read the Christmas story, sang carols, hung up stockings and put the kids to bed. We said they could get up at 7am. They were in our bedroom right at 7. We opened presents slowly, played for a while and then had another BIG Christmas Breakfast. We then just played all day, did an easy dinner and sent all of the kids to bed. It was a VERY very lovely and calm Christmas.
Here's the scoop on gifts:
Favorite/most played with gifts: toy swords, dart guns, Plants vs Zombies, baby born
Most Frustrating Gift: Toy swords that began breaking on Christmas day,chocolate candy every where.
Returned gift: PC game for Dad (it had bad reviews and he always wants what he doesn't get. That is why we always wrap the receipt too.)
Ruth with all of her stocking gifts
Here I am with my big nose in the sun glasses (I needed these) from my sweet Ruthy
Joseph loved this gift. We haven't had such a young baby so excited and alert at Christmas as Joseph was.
I just think this is an adorable picture of Kate. I think Johnny gave her the glass cat.
Dart Tag!!!
John thinking about whether this is a gift worth keeping :). It failed the amazon user ratings test. He has until next Monday to replace it or I will buy him another gift.
Anya loved unwrapping. She is a pro too. Gotto love the morning hair !!
Kate unwrapping a DS from Grandma and Rachel dancing in her new dress from Grandma.
Johnny getting ready to shoot.
Adam got dressed right away so he could have a good place to keep his sword.
When we got home from grocery shopping yesterday we found this notice taped to our door. I will have to give a short history to explain this. When we were looking to buy a house, most houses in our price range were short sales, in which one has to get the offer approved from the bank before one's offer would be accepted. The banks sometimes take a very long time on this. When the bank hadn't done anything about our offer on this place, and when we couldn't find anything that we thought would suit us better for around the same price we got in touch with a man that sets short sales up as rentals. We started renting this place planning to buy it. In November when John had to ask to be laid off because his company was not making payroll, we just hoped that the bank would still be slow to accept our offer. But we had a "safe-lease" in that if the bank took another offer we had 60 days to move out. Well, apparently the owners of this place are in serious financial trouble and have filed for bankruptcy. This house is now being sold at auction on Feb 2nd to pay for the owners debts. So our lease is actually void. Even if John had a job, we could not bid on the house, because you have to have the full amount of money within three days after the auction. Obviously with an FHA loan that we would need, we would not even qualify to bid. So now, we have approximately 28 days to pack up, find a new place, and move . John still does not have a job. We haven't defaulted on rent or any other bills, but I am not sure that will matter as we look for another place to rent. If john gets a job in the next two weeks, I think we will be fine. There are plenty of houses for rent around $1,200 a month that we could fit into and qualify family size wise to rent. That is about $200 more than what we are now paying and what we ever hoped to have to pay. But I think that does not matter now. We need a home for our children.
