December Happenings!

I started writing this post about a week before Christmas but alas, it never got published. I only got the pictures uploaded but ran out of time to write!

Here's a few things that we were up to this past month (with the exception of Christmas Eve and Christmas...I'll cover those in another post!).

Christmas card pictures at our favorite place....Starbucks!!

How did my baby turn into such a little girl so quickly??

Is it just me or does Everett look a little bit like Charlie Brown??

I did pictures of Ems in a Santa bag for her first Christmas too, remember?

The weekend before my parents got here, we went to Great Wolf Lodge for the night! We went on a Sunday night so it was a lot cheaper then their usual really expensive rates. We brought Emersyn's favorite person in the world with us, her 7 year old cousin Annabel.

The girls forgot to bring shoes other then their boots. :)

It was SO much fun!! They had a ton of things to do there, more then we even had time for! They did a really fun story time at night and they even made it "snow" with bubbles. It was a little challenging with all of us sleeping in the same room but we made it work and it was a blast. Emersyn was SO brave and went down all the slides that her size allowed. We are going to make it a yearly tradition for sure, especially at Christmas time. It was so fun to see the lodge all decorated with Christmas trees and lights.

On Tuesday, December 13th Emersyn had her first preschool Christmas program and it was just darling. Her class sang three songs. Of course my girl is totally into music and can't help herself when she gets the urge to dance so during the first song she starts dancing and jumping which then lead to the entire class jumping and singing. It was hilarious and adorable.

Emersyn, Isabelle and Emery

Baby Everett posing as Baby Jesus

So proud of our girl!!

On December 14th my parents arrived in town and the fun began! Emersyn loved having her grandparents stay with us and they had a blast playing together.

Ems and Grandpa, getting ready to go on a walk!

We made Christmas sugar cookies that were delicious!!!!!! The secret is almond extract in the buttercream frosting. :)

We made a gingerbread house with Uncle David!!

There was lots of cuddling with MiMi!

And Grandpa!

Ems helped me send out Christmas cards.....just a couple days before Christmas!

We looked at the lights on Peacock Lane!

We visited Santaland at the local Alpenrose Dairy.

It was such a fun holiday season and it's still going. I think the holdays are officially over once everyone goes back to work, which in our case is January 3rd. :)

More to come later!

"Becoming a Big Sister"

My amazingly talented brother and his equally talented and beautiful wife

My brother got his degree in film and cinema studies at George Fox University and boy am I glad that he did. He filmed Emersyn's birth and made a very sweet documentary of him "becoming an uncle". Well, this time with Everett's birth he not only filmed that but also filmed the very special moment when Emersyn met her baby brother for the first time. I am so so thankful that he caught these precious moments. It's so hard/impossible to soak up each moment during such a special occasion and now this little mini movie will forever be in my heart.

Enjoy!!

http://youtu.be/Po8y31HuWXM

Five Question Friday

Both of my kids are asleep right now and while there are a million things I could be doing, I choose to blog...twice in one day no less! A little "me time" never hurt anyone....

1. What is your favorite Christmas decoration in your house? For sure my tree. I love all the ornaments that Brett and I picked for it and now the special ones that have accumulated as we've had kids, received them as gifts, etc. I did a post about ornaments a couple years ago but I should do another one to update it now that we've received and added some fun ones.

2. Do you finish your Christmas shopping early or are you a last minute type? Eh, a little bit of both. I am not one that collects gifts all year by any means but I'm not usually a Christmas Eve shopper.

3. When do you turn on your heat? I used to think that my parents house was fah-reezing and almost to the point of being unwelcoming. Well, apparently I adapted their crazy chilly lifestyle because now my thermostat is set to that chilly temp that was at my parents house, 65. If I am cold I will turn it up to 67 but usually I'll get too warm from doing things around the house. And if we forget to turn it back down to 65, we wake up sweating and HOT at 67. My in-laws keep their house at like 73 and often turn it up to 75. I sweat just thinking about it being that hot and I think that temp is stuffy. I feel like 65 at my house isn't as cold as it was at my parents house though, strange huh? I like having the fireplace on for heat but then it doesn't heat the upstairs and our rooms are freezing which wasn't a big deal before kiddos but now that Ems goes to bed so much before us, we don't have the fireplace on much at night.

4. Do you ever wish your blog was private? YES. There are some things that I'd like to blog about that I don't necessarily want the world to see. I wish you could pick who could see certain posts, like have a list of people approved to see private posts.

5. Do you put your deodorant on before of after you put on your shirt? Before and pretty much immediately after getting out of the shower!

Fill in the Blank Friday

1. The holiday season is a magical time of year!!! A big part of the magic is that my husband loves it just as much as I do. We love Christmas movies, the lights, the music, all of it. We loved it before we had kids and now we love it even more now that we get to experience it through the eyes of a three year old. I love hearing her yell "CHRISTMAS LIGHTS" and "SANTA!!!!!" whenever she sees the inflatables in our neighborhood. I'm happy that she's pronouncing his name correctly this year, rather then referring to him as Satan like she did last year. :)

2. Snow makes me happy when I'm indoors and S.T.R.E.S.S.E.D out when I'm driving in it. I love the anticipation of snow. If there is even a hint of it in the forecast everyone gets so excited and when it actually does snow, all the news stations get taken over by snow coverage and they usually come up with some cheesy name like "arctic blast 2011" or something.

3. The best comfort food to eat when it's cold out is soup, chili and cornbread. Cold weather always inspires me to bake as well!

4. Winter is the best time for reading, snuggling by the fire, sleeping in (or so I imagine...haven't been able to do that too often for the last 3+ years), drinking white peppermint mochas, getting reorganized around the house, trying new recipes like the one I am trying tonight!

5. I can hardly wait for my parents to get here in less then two weeks!! I'm also excited for a family day tomorrow of finishing up Christmas decorating, running to IKEA to buy a pantry sort of cabinet for our dining room (we don't have a pantry, just one cupboard for food...it's a bummer!), helping out at our church's Christmas concerts Sunday night, a date night next Friday and then Great Wolf Lodge that weekend!!!!

6. When it comes to holiday gifts I prefer to make sure they aren't the focus of the season. I LOVE giving gifts when I can think of something great to give. I hate just having to think of SOMETHING for someone for the sake of a gift exchange.

7. If I were to rate my excitement about the holiday season on a scale from 1-10, I would say I am at about a 10. :) I had no idea that a sweet baby boy would be joining us this year and I'm ecstatic to celebrate the holiday season this year with my TWO kids. :)