From the Benich Family...

 


  The Benich Family wishes everyone a Merry Christmas and a blessed 2013!

 

 

Love,
Ken, Dani, Dee & Kyle    
 

The Holidays Have Arrived!

 

We started out by decorating our windows with some snowflakes.  At first glance, they look pretty and show that we're embracing our winter season (however reluctantly by some of us).  But you have to look closer to realize that these aren't just ANY snowflakes, they are Star Wars snowflakes!!!  Over a period of several days, with a lot of patience and an exacto knife, I cut out each and every Star Wars design that was available.  I downloaded the entire collection from here.  (And since then, I've found even more... but I don't think I am up for cutting out any more.)  Here's a close-up of a few of them:

   

Fun, huh?  Kyle knew what they all were and absolutely loved them.  :-)   Then we were getting our house ready for a holiday party, as my family was going to celebrate Christmas a bit early at my house to accomodate everyone's schedules.  Since I had been asking for years to fix our bathrooms up, I asked if we could simply fix a few things before the party.  And somehow it morphed into practically remodeling both bathrooms.  A couple of weeks before the party, my husband decides to take my holiday and pre-party stress to a whole new, yet unachieved level by tearing apart both our bathrooms.  So, here's our lovely downstairs half bath before (showing the lovely brownish/orangish sink and toilet):

 

   

And here's our just as lovely upstairs full bathroom (you really can't see all the little areas that are falling apart in these pictures):



 

I thought we were just going to paint, fix the floors and do some minor changes.  And then this is what the downstairs half bath looked like:

   

Seriously?!?  We were having a party in our house in a couple of weeks.  It was time to bring in help, so my parents came over and one of Kenny's buddies, Chris.  And somehow, after a lot of work from everyone, our bathrooms finally came back together before the party.  I'm thrilled they are looking a lot nicer (since I've pretty much wanted to remodel them since Dee was two), but next time let's not be doing any house remodeling during the holidays and just a couple of weeks before a party at our house.  

Downstairs half bath:  

 

 

Upstairs full bath:  





 

Whew!  After an intense cleaning, it was time to celebrate Christmas with my side of the family (complete with remodeled bathrooms).  Our family, my mom & dad, grandma, sister and her boys and boyfriend were all there.  We ate way too much food, had a lot of fun opening and sharing gifts, and played some fun games.   

 

The kids were thrilled to open some gifts early.  They've been wearing new clothes to school this week and playing new games.  It's helping make this last week before Christmas vacation not drag on so long.  Three more days to our two weeks break from school (and Dee's birthday too)!

~Dani