A few of my favorite things

I love having my house decorated for Christmas. I also love that it is only up for a month out of the year because rediscovering it all the following year has to be the best part. These are a few of my favorites.

This bell handmade in Poland my that my in-laws got me for my birthday last year.

This framed picture of Paul and I with our very first Christmas tree.

This advent my mom got me a few years ago that I now fill with treats for the kids. Each day you turn the little box around and it slowly becomes a picture like a puzzle.

My favorite holiday movies along with that Santa Mickey mug Paul and I bought at Disneyland last year that had some amazing chocolate mousse in it.

These burlap bows I found in the One Spot at Target that adorn my tree.

Oh, and, not pictured: our baby Jesus from our nativity that is hiding in the coat closet since he doesn't officially make his arrival until Christmas morning according to my husband. Technically, I'm supposed to put the wise men away as well but they are standing near the empty stable.

It's the holiday season

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and a great kickoff to my favorite time of year. Paul had to work on Thanksgiving so we were definitely missing him but the food was delicious, as always, and the company was even better. I know I have said this a million times but I'm so grateful for my in laws who have welcomed me as one of their own. They made Thanksgiving very memorable for myself and my children. And Paul enjoyed his leftovers that evening. 

 

 

The following day was Paul's last day of work before his vacation so we were in very high spirits. We kicked off his time at home by making him take down all of our Christmas decorations. This is the first thing we discovered.

 

This house needs higher ceilings. We let the kids hang most of the ornaments so we have several clusters where they put tons of ornaments on the same branch. And no I'm not moving them because it makes me smile every time I see it. 

 

Since then we have written to Santa with our gift requests, visited the Mission Inn in Riverside for their Festival of Lights, enjoyed the carolers and "snowfall" at the mall and had family over for our second Thanksgiving. I LOVE having my husband home and I LOVE the month of December!

 

 

A (rainy) day in the life

 

We have Internet! I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do around here so I'm just going to start at the beginning. November 12 (I think) was the third anniversary of this blog. I'm so glad I have been able to keep up with this thing for three whole years. I have loved looking back and reading stories and looking at old pictures. There are so many things I have written here that I honestly wouldn't have remembered otherwise. I guess that comes with getting old. (I'm celebrating my 29th birthday in 12 days so there are a lot of comments like that coming your way). Anyway, I decided to try another photo project. Not one that lasts a year (heavens, no) but one that lasts a day. I took a picture every hour for a whole day as a (sort of) glimpse into my daily life. It just so happened to be raining that day so I wouldn't say it was indicative of my life but you will get the gist. Here goes.

 

6am: Coffee. First thing.

 

 

7am: starting the day with Mary Poppins

 

8am: Post breakfast snack. (My kids are always eating). Oh, and those Pez dispensers were empty.

 

9am: Getting out of the house

 

10am: Coffee at the playground

 

11am: Peter pan baked a cake for Captain Hook (me) while Brygit tamed Rapunzel's wild hair

 

12pm: Brygit went down for her nap and I got to kick my feet up and play video games with Liam. I will admit it. This was my favorite time of the day.

 

1pm: We ran around the backyard with our pup.

 

2pm: Gotta start dinner early or it will never get done.

 

3pm: I chased the kids around the kitchen as is our afternoon ritual so I could only get blurry shots like these.

 

4pm: Chalk time

 

quickly followed by throwing chalk time.

 

5pm: Can you guess what we ate for dinner? And, no, it wasn't the pretzels.

 

6pm: Bath time

 

7pm: Making popcorn on the stove

 

8pm: Daddy's home!!!!

 

9pm: I listen to Brygit snore on the monitor while hanging out with Paul

 

Giving Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving! I haven't blogged in a while because we have been so busy moving. We are finally all settled in and I am posting this from my phone because we still have no internet and our computer isn't even hooked up anyway. 

You can probably guess what I'm thankful for. Those two smart, healthy rambunctious babes pictured above, my hard working husband who will be working hard Thanksgiving day, awesome friends and family who are always willing to lend a hand, a new place to call home with a super sweet landlord, food, water, clothing (especially those generous hand me downs) and, most importantly, I am so thankful for lessons I believe God is teaching me and for his grace when I'm not such a great student. 

Sick Day

 

You know how sometimes you get so carried away and stressed out about life but then something happens that makes you realize how dumb it is to stress over the little things? Yeah, that's me right now. We are moving and painting and sick and my phone broke and my bank account is broke and my kids have been fighting with each other and making me repeat myself way more times than I like and Brygit wakes up 20 times a night so I'm exhausted and look like I got hit by a truck. But I heard some news from a friend that made me weep. Because it was that bad. Then I kicked myself for complaining about moving and my phone and my kids and money and sleep (oh, precious, amazing sleep). I have everything I ever wanted. Life is challenging but, if it wasn't, what would be the point? 

We stayed home today in an attempt to recuperate and not spread our germs and it has been lovely. Having tickle fights on the couch, cleaning my kitchen while listening to the kids play nicely together, baking a batch of fudge and eating more of it than I am willing to admit, chasing the dog around the backyard, praying and feeling thankful for my life. I should schedule a "sick day" once a week, I think. 

We are moving... again

 

 

Don't let the title of this post alarm you. We are just moving around the corner. Like, literally, we are moving to the house whose backyard touches ours. We are currently brainstorming a cool way to pass our household items over the fence. In case you're new around here, we just moved a year ago and now that our lease is up, the owners of our house want to raise our already high rent. We are opting to say, "no thank you," and move to a smaller place in the same neighborhood for a lot less money. Through this process I have really felt like this has been a God given opportunity for our family to save for the future, be more generous in the present, and to abandon the emphasis we place on our material possessions. You would be surprised at how hard it actually is to decide to leave a place you call home and opt for one with less square footage... and blue carpet. That being said, we have been organizing and purging and donating and planning ways to make this new place ours and I have to say it feels amazing. It feels good to be in a better place financially, sure, but what is really great is how good it feels to realign my priorities, put more emphasis on what really matters and feel so thankful for all that we are given. Paul kind of laughed at me the other day when I mentioned that I feel kind of dumb for stressing out over little things like this when there are people in the world who don't have running water but I'm dead serious. We are so incredibly blessed and I am feeling so excited about cramming all of our blessed children's toys into this new place!