Family....no matter what

Well Christmas is officially here. It has become an annual tradition that we go to the Festival of Trees. The girls search through all the trees to find their favorite. Elsa is a superman tree and Livy's was a princess tree. My favorite (sorry, no pic) was a tree that was complete made of blown glass. lights were flickering inside the glass tree. It beautiful. Micah saw a tree totally decorated in Philladelphia Eagles that he loved the most. I also love the gingerbread village. For the first time I saw not just one but several trees that still hadn't sold. I felt bad to see those trees go unwanted. The painting that I posted was amazing to see in real life. It was huge and went for about $28,000. I could stare at it all day, the detail in it was mesmorizing. We went during the evening and it was actually better than going during the day. The girls got right in to see Santa. The girls were shocked to see that he called them by name to come and sit on their lap ( there was a worker who asked us before hand and he told Santa, but the girls didn't know that).

We set up our tree and decorated the house. Micah and I went to my work Christmas party at Spencer's. It was so good. I was pleasantly surprised when my bonus was a little bit bigger than years past. I really thought that it would be less (due to the economy).
The girls and I are just getting over the stomache flu. I don't know what could be worse when all your kids are sick including yourself. There definately wasn't a whole lot of time to sit and feel sorry for myself and lay in bed resting when I was washing out bowls and doing laundry all day long.
I have been really struggling in getting into the christmas spirit this year. I don't quite know what it is but I just have to remind myself of all the things that I have been blessed with and try not to focus on all the negative things that are going on right now. If any of you have any advice for me, please let me know. Thank you all for your friendship and I wish you a merry christmas.