Christmas Festivities 2013

We celebrated with my whole family (plus a friend of Robyn's) at Lori's house on Christmas Eve.

Lori's little tree was pretty cute and totally surrounded by presents as each guest arrived and added more.

Her cats were confused by the crowd but didn't run and hide, they're cute.

Austin turned 13!!

We had a delightful spread.

Landon labeled the cups.

This is what it looked like.

This is the set up in Lori's living room...she had to bring in camp chairs to accommodate the crowd.

My dad saved his Scripture reading chart from last year...definitely daunting.

Everyone used the scriptures on their phones. It took 46 minutes to get through the first 6 references on the list (there was much explaining after each passage) then my dad took pity on the kids and let them open presents before finishing the other references (last year we did them all and it took forever).

Selfie with Landon.

We always let Andrew open his presents first, and it's hilarious to how quickly he discards the stuff he doesn't want (like these shoes). 

It was a full room for sure.

Notice Suki (the cat) making herself at home in one of the boxes.

My parents shocked us by giving Landon a check for $600 to start his Mission Fund. They gave Austin a $100 check to start his (apparently they're giving $50 per birthday and Christmas starting at age 13, hence the adjusted totals).

Lori made me a couple mix cds and a framed photo from our California trip.

Randy and I are combining the money my parents usually spend on us to get a new TV. Our current TV is 20 years old and flickering so we're afraid it will die any day.

Bookclub Christmas--Best Gathering of the Year

We gathered at Collette's house last Friday night to celebrate Christmas together. It's been a rough year for book club gatherings because we've all gotten so busy it's hard to be together at the same time each month. This year we moved our gatherings to the 2nd Friday night of each month, which helped immensely with the late nights for Collette and I since we have to get out the door for work in the mornings and because there are less conflicts with kids' sports/church activities. But we still ran into conflicts with vacations and busyness.

This was the first time we'd all been together in several months!

Collette had the table set beautifully and a scrumptious roast cooked.

Jenn brought salad, Jana brought rolls, Amy brought baked potatoes, I brought the sparkling grape juice, and Michelle was on dessert.

This is the view from the kitchen looking into "the book club room". Usually the blue lounge chair is not there, but it is left over from Collette's husband Travis' recent kidney and pancreas transplant!! It is such a miracle that he is no longer diabetic and that he is healthy and well, this felt like a milestone for book club too!

As Jana was sitting there looking at her feet she realized she had mismatched, fuzzy red socks on.

Michelle made this fabulous oatmeal, butterscotch cookie pie thing with a caramel sauce. We devoured it of course!

We continued our traditional book exchange, isn't this book mark made by Collette cute?

  Michelle got her book from Collette.

Collette got a book from Amy.

Amy got a book from me.

Jenn got a book from Jana.

Jana got her book from Michelle.

I got 2 books from Jenn! She knows I hate paying for church-type books so she got me this Emily Freeman book and then also The Lover's Dictionary which is on my to-read list but I didn't remember putting it there but I'm thrilled to get it.

The whole book is done like this with a different work heading on each page and talks about love.

These are the unwrapped books we gave/got.

Then it was on to gifts! I ended up giving the girls this draft paper Christmas print that I got from Pinterest. I really struggled to come up with something this year, but I love this.

It was a bountiful harvest! Amy made us paper poinsettia decorations, Jana gave us a substantial roll of wrapping paper, Collette gave us an autographed book and Cadbury eggs, Michelle gave us a cute tin with candy canes and a decorative frame, and then Jenn was the big finale with the suitcases full of treat goodness AND the black wood Christmas tree decoration. We're spoiled for sure.

12 on the 12th--December Edition

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1. I took this screenshot on my phone when I got up for the day 8 minutes before my alarm!
2. I was ahead of schedule so I had more time to eat my toast and watch The New Adventures of Old Christine (I love that show, so funny).
3. Family scripture reading, notice how it looks like Whitney is sleeping.
4. Coke run on the way to work.
5. Getting work in the dark at 7:15am.
6. Whitney usually stops by the office at lunch time to see if I have anything she can talk me into taking her out for lunch or if I have any treats.
7. I love having the garlands and bows on our fence at Christmas time.
8. Good mail from the hospital with the results from the previous week's Mammogram.
9. Landon and Whitney babysat the kids next door as an act of Service but Landon had a basketball game during that time so we brought 2 of the 3 kids with us to the game. It was hilarious and exhausting. 
10. Landon looks huge these days (that's his goal) and it's weird to see all these high school boys morphing into big men.
11. Randy and I watched Survivor (we love that show).
12. I manage to read 3-4 pages before falling asleep each night even though the book is so good.

I can't believe I've completed another year of 12 on the 12th grids! This is my 4th year in a row and I love it. Now that I've finished this year I can order my 8x10 grids to put on the wall in our hallway. 

Babystepping to Christmas

The Saturday after Thanksgiving was beautiful and 50 degrees. Randy and I did the final raking of leaves (which were surprisingly plentiful) and decorating the outside of the house; it's nice to hang the garlands on the fence before it gets freezing outside. Too bad we ran out of steam before we got the lights on the roof though!

I was so happy to have the next Tuesday off of work because I was finally able to get our Advent stocking tree organized for the kids. Michelle made these darling stockings for us a few years ago and I've never been on top of things enough to use them. It took me quite awhile to come up with the activities to put on the slips to put in the stockings (apparently I'm challenged). I had the calendar out so I could coordinate the dates of the activities so the more involved stuff happens on the weekends or Monday nights.

I put an activity in each one and a small candy for each of the kids.

This is the mini tree the stockings hang on, so cute.

Saturday was super snowy and we stayed in all day. Randy picked up some pizza for lunch (stuffed crust!) and we finally decorated the tree and the inside of the house.

The kids are getting huge.

Our tree is has the homespun look for sure, but we love it.

It was the perfect activity for a snowy day at home.

At one point Whitney was upset and channeled her anger into this lovely Christmas wish list...no it's not driving us crazy at all. Good times.

Creative Friday--It's Still Happening Edition

After missing two weeks of Creative Fridays because of my California trip and then Thanksgiving Break we were happy to get together again. We haven't been taking self-portraits because they seem to be getting increasingly disappointing, but I insisted we do it because they're historically significant and I know we'll be sad later if we stop.

I mixed things up by bringing DP Cheesesteaks for lunch...so good.

We spent the majority of our day cutting out Christmas Tags we'd downloaded and printed from Pinterest.

Aren't they cute?! I'm planning to gift a bunch of them to my Secret Pal next week.

I also put together little treat bags for our primary substitute teacher thank yous.

This Christmas music book on Michelle's piano looked rather homey and festive.