Wednesday, December 31, 2008
One reason I love being married...
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Christmas recap.
Tuesday we left for Columbia and arrived right around dinner time. The night was spent practicing our nursing home music, playing a game, and watching a christmas movie. Mom loved watching my belly move and loved seeing her grandson kicking... we had lots to catch up on regarding the baby since earlier in the day I had an appt. Here's proof of the belly obsession... my sister snapped a picture of my mom checking it out.
{don't mind the chihuahua... she makes her way into every picture!}

Wednesday (Christmas Eve) both my Mom and Dad had to work so Tyler and I took full advantage of that and slept in. Once we woke up, we had a really lazy morning, consisting of sipping on coffee, wrapping a few leftover gifts, and ran to Best Buy to check out a video camera we're looking at buying. (gotta catch all those cute baby keith things on video!) Once my Mom got home we spent the afternoon baking... sorry, no pics. We made lots of Christmas goodies, including a delicious pistacio dessert... one good enough that I'll be making it again soon!
That night we went to my parents church for our usual Christmas Eve service... it was good. A little long for my taste, but still beautiful none the less.


After the service my Dad took us to drive by what was named "the prettiest Christmas tree in Columbia". It definitely lived up to its named. This baby is called "The Magic Tree" - it has 75,000 lights on it... no joke! A guy has this set up in his front yard... you should have seen the traffic! Lots of people driving by just to see it. $20 bucks says the neighbors can't stand the guy... haha.

Christmas morning we woke up and did the usual... opened our stockings to see what "Santa" brought us. One thing I wanted for Christmas was for it to be a "white Christmas"... but no such luck. It was more like a "upper 40's-50's kind-of Christmas".

One tradition we have as a family is every Christmas we go to a local Nursing home and bless the residents there with some music. We play our instruments, and sing lots of fun vocal arrangements. This year we went to the same place that we did last year... it was fun recognizing some of the faces we saw last year. It is always such a blessing to me when we do this... such an easy way to bless so many people. So many of these people spend Christmas day cooped up in their rooms, and it's spent just like any other day of the week. No family comes to visit them, no one stops in to give them a gift... nothing. It is so sad and makes me cry every year when you see their faces light up. I love that my family does this every year. It is one of the quickest ways for me to snap right into the holiday spirit... by giving to others. And check out this sign they had posted all over the nursing home!! They were super excited to have us back again! (but seriously, who wouldn't be?! juuuust kidding!!!!)

Chad and Kaela and the kids arrived Christmas night so after we had a delicious dinner, we recited our Christmas verses (everyone in the family has a section of the Christmas story from the Bible that we have to MEMORIZE and recite before we can open gifts) and then opened our gifts. Christmas night was spent laughing endlessly and playing the new games we received.

My parents beautiful tree!

The whole fam!
Friday we shopped till we dropped... never again will I step foot in a mall the day after Christmas!! It was by far worse than Black Friday. And the evening was spent ... you guessed it! Playing games. (My family is sorta obsessed with this, as you can probably tell!)
Saturday morning we made Perogies. If you know what perogies are, you win a gold star for the day. This is one of my Dad's family's old recipes that my family never makes because it is soooo time consuming. However, when you make a "train" and have a different person doing each step of the "train", it goes by a lot faster. In fact, we whipped these perogies together within about 30 minutes, when it would normally take hours to do with 2 people. Saturday afternoon we went bowling which was a blast! Here's a couple pics of the all-star bowler... my 3 yr old nephew! He was actually pretty good.

Isn't he cute?!

He held this pose the entire time the ball was going down the lane each time! It was hilarious.
We left Columbia to head back home on Saturday after dinner (after enjoying those delicious perogies!!!) We got home late Saturday night and spent Sunday relaxing and catching up on housework.... gotta love being an adult ;)
Hope you had a Merry Christmas and was able to celebrate the birth of our Savior... the real reason for Christmas!!!
Happy New Year!
{Stay tuned for a 32/33 week baby update... I have lots to share!}
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...
Our Christmas tree - with the lights off
With the lights on... still looking for that perfect topper after 3 years!






Here's a little back-story on this itty bitty Christmas tree. I bought this last year to go outside but this year when I put it out there, it got knocked over by the wind and the stand broke. The same day I was begging Tyler to let me get a smaller, tall & skinny tree to put downstairs to put his childhood ornaments on it. When I came home from work later that day, Tyler had fixed the stand and put this little tree in our basement. So I figured - I might as well decorate it. ;)

He got to go to Hallmark each year as a child and pick out a different ornament... it was fun unpacking these and seeing the different things he was into each year! Although the vast majority of them are Star Wars/Star Trek! What can I say... I love him anyways. ;) I'd love to do the same for Jaxon... go and let him pick out his own ornament each year. I'm looking forward to all the new traditions we'll start as a family.

Some of the little details around the house...

Greenery/Ornaments above the sliding glass door

I LOVE my red vase I got last year for Christmas... (did you notice my fabulous stripes on the wall behind it?! More to come from that later...)

Picked up these cuties last year on clearance!

And these too!
I'm hoping to pick up lots of decor this year after Christmas once it all goes on clearance... the small amount of things that I have went a lot farther in our little townhouse, but doesn't quite fill all the spaces in our house this year!
So that's it! Hope you enjoyed the little Christmas tour of our house! Feel free to stop over... I make a delicious hot chocolate!
Merry Christmas!!
Monday, December 15, 2008
Be afraid.. be very afraid.

All I can do is hope and pray that these suckers are not making a comeback, because I guarantee I will not be wearing them.
1992 called... they want their earmuffs back.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Update to being a slacker.
- My baby shower was 2 weekends ago. Normally my thank-you’s would have been completed and in the mail by now. Definitely haven’t even started on them yet, but I promise to have them done by the end of the week.
Update: They are now completed, and everyone should have received their thank-you by now! Phew... now I don't feel so guilty looking at all the fun stuff we got!
- I promised you all picture of my house over a month ago… still haven’t even taken the pics, much less uploaded them. Sorry…
Update: Ok, so I haven't done this one yet. Maybe this weekend after I give it a swift cleaning job.
- I haven’t ordered or even found Christmas cards that I like this year yet. Last year they were stamped, addressed, and ready to go by Thanksgiving. (Side note: if you design or know of a designer willing to make some for me, I’d love a name and recommendation!) I’m seriously debating not sending them at all this year… maybe no one will notice.
Update: I found some fairly inexpensive ones on mpix.com... they are not my favorite, but they served the purpose. And I'm happy to say they are now complete and I dropped them in the mail this morning.
- Last year my Christmas decorations were up the day after Thanksgiving. Granted, we were out of town this year, but I had all day yesterday to do this. Instead, I sat on the couch and got caught up on Grey’s. And the thought of doing this tonight or any other night this week does not sound appealing at all. (What is wrong with me!?)
Update: I had a terrible day at work one day last week and Tyler somehow convinced me that by decorating for Christmas would help put me in a better mood. Dang it, he was right. I got all of our decor up... pics coming soon!
This weekend we don't have any plans... sometimes I think those are my favorite kinds of weekends! Although I have to work tomorrow until 1. The hubs and I have both been working tons of OT (I've put in 15 extra hours this week alone already) so we're both exhausted and I can only hope this weekend will be boring and nothing will happen. Isn't that sad when that's all you can hope for? ... Relaxation?
The to-do list for this weekend:
- Laundry
- Quick cleaning job (maybe "pick-up" cleaning job would be a better term)
- Quick, small grocery shopping trip
- Start organizing and sorting baby clothes
- Take a couple naps
- Relax!
Hope you have a great weekend... and as always, TGIF!