Christmas Eve

We have been able to find a good balance with family during the holidays. On Christmas Eve we go to church, then to our dear family friend's house for a dinner and party with my family. Christmas morning we spend with Brett's family and then Christmas afternoon and evening we spend with my parents and my brother and his wife. Then because we spend so much time with my parents for the holiday since they come for two weeks and stay at our house, we always do a New Year's Day brunch with Brett's family at our house and I make quiche, one of my favorite things to eat!

Christmas Eve was spent going to breakfast in the morning and then running errands with my mom and Everett while the men and the Ems watched football. Then we headed to church in the evening.

I bought this outfit at the Hannan Anderson outlet when Ems was 4 months old for $10 ($5 each for the tights and the skirt) and I thought she would wear it the following Christmas. Well, it just this year finally fit! I thought she looked like a Christmas princess.

The Christmas Eve service at church is always so special. They do a story time for the kids, advent reading, sing Christmas carols and then my favorite part....a candlelight time. A little girl sings "Silent Night" and comes into the sanctuary with one candle and then she lights our Pastor's candle and then he goes and lights other people's and then we all light each other's candles. Emersyn wanted her own this year and she was so careful and proud to be holding it by herself. I could feel the people around us nervously watching her and I was too, ha ha. I was totally ready to stomp out a fire on the ground if she dropped it. :)

After the service, we headed over to the Meichtry's house for food and fun! Emersyn got to hang out with her buddy Ian, who she has repeatedly expressed interest in marrying. They are adorable together.

Erica finally got to meet Everett! He was still in my tummy at her wedding this past summer, though he made his arrival less then two weeks after her big day.

Santa always makes an appearance on Christmas Eve!! Last year Ems cried and was NOT into it! This year she was hesitant but way more into it.

Everett was pretty chill although he must have been pretty excited to lose his shoe at some point in the evening.

After the party we headed home to put out treats for Santa! Ems was SO excited!

Sampling Santa's milk to make sure it tasted good.

A healthy snack for Santa, just in case he starts to feel icky from all the cookies!

A Starbucks VIA packet in case he needs a caffeine boost. We also put a homemade sugar cookie on the plate.

And here's how the tree looked with all the goodies underneath! I love my tree and love wrapping presents.

Everett's Dedication

December 18th was a very special day for our family! Everett was dedicated at our church along with two other babies.

Our Senior Pastor's wife does such a good job doing the baby dedications. She firmly believes that the names you choose for your children can shape who they are and who they become. Everytime we say our child's name, we are speaking the meaning of their name over them. Whenever I say Everett David, I am declaring that he is strong, brave and beloved. I just love his name and love it even more so once I knew the meaning.

These were the verses that Linda picked out for Everett:

Everett: Strong and Brave

Psalm: 27:14 (NKJV)

Wait on the Lord; be of courage, and He shall strengthen your heart.

David: Beloved One

Deuteronomy 33:12 (KJV)

The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by Him....the Lord shall cover Him all day long.

I love these verses and want to write them onto a canvas in his room.

After the dedication, Emersyn's preschool choir sang us a couple songs and it was darling. I didn't get any pictures but we did get a video. She looked darling and did a great job. She sang all the words and LOVED being on the stage.

To celebrate our special day, we went out to lunch after church with my parents, Brett's parents, Brett's brother and his daughter. We went to The Old Spaghetti Factory, a family favorite.

Emersyn's face in this picture cracks me up....she's so so expressive these days. :)

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. :)

'Tis the Season

Well, the holidays are officially in full swing and I can hardly believe it! We had a great Thanksgiving and I had hoped to take more pictures yesterday but that proved to be hard to do when I realized that I left my camera at home. Oh well.

On Thursday our day started with a visit from Uncle David and Auntie Jenny. We Skyped with my parents and it was nice to have a little chat. After D & J left we went and had a low key meal with Brett's parents, two siblings and two nieces. I made a turkey breast in the crockpot that turned out really yummy. Only four of us ate turkey (the rest are vegetarians) so I didn't want to hassle with a whole huge turkey. The breast was a great alternative and turned out yummy (thank you Allrecipes.com).

On Friday I woke up not feeling well and I don't think it was from eating too much. I really didn't eat more then normal on Thursday. I had woken up a couple times in the night feeling nauseous and in the morning I felt worse. Brett had to go into his work for a half day so he took Emersyn over to his mom's house so I could try to get some extra rest which was nice. After some more sleep, I felt a lot better and got ready. I went to get a couple things at the store and then headed back over to my in-law's for a birthday party for my niece. Friday night Brett and I went on a date. And by date I mean we went shopping for a new washing machine and to the Olive Garden. We are so old and suburban. :) We found a killer deal on a washing machine, praise the Lord. It gets mixed reviews though and that's kind of concerning. Ugh. Still need to research and make a FINAL decision. We bought it but can change our mind if needed. One thing is for SURE, I am sick of not having a washing machine. I have gone to my in-law's twice to do laundry and that's not the most convenient thing. Hauling two kids plus baskets of laundry is not fun. The washing machine that we bought is 3-4 weeks back ordered too. Lovely. Oh well, we'll survive. Luckily my kids have a lot of clothes. Unfortunately this is not the case for their parents. ;)

On Saturday Brett went and watched the Civil War which took up a big part of the day. When he got home he did get some Christmas decorations up outside and I was able to get some indoor cleaning done. We hoped to get our tree up but ran out of time.

Yesterday we went to church in the morning and then down to Albany for Thanksgiving with Brett's Dad's side of the family. It was nice to see people we hadn't seen in a long time and Emersyn got to play with some of Brett's older cousins which was cute. We stayed longer then I wanted to and then Ems fell asleep on the way home and slept from 7:30-8:30 which made me a little nervous for her bedtime. She stayed up until 10 once we got home and then woke up at 8 this morning. She'll probably take a good nap today but I'll most likely be at my in-law's doing laundry so I won't get to reap the full benefits of her nap while she sleeps there.

I've got a fun but busy week ahead. Tomorrow night we're taking a meal to a new mama and hanging out with them in the evening which will be fun. It's always fun watching first time parents and encouraging them. Sometimes you just need to hear that you're doing a great job, ya know? Wednesday night Emersyn's preschool program at church is having a movie night and Brett and I are going to help out. Thursday night we are going to the dress rehearsal for our church's big Christmas concert. I want Ems to be able to see the concert but I don't think she'd sit through the real thing so the rehearsal is a great alternative. Friday night I'm hoping to get to a friend's Christmas party but I'm not sure what Brett's work schedule is going to look like that evening. His schedule can vary depending on what time of year it is and I don't think he's going to get off early enough for me to attend but I'm hoping!

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!!!