decorating for Christmas & advent activities

I woke up the other day, realized it was December 1st and promptly freaked out.

I typically start getting ready for the Christmas season in the last part of November.

That did not happen this year!

I have been busy, busy, busy trying to get caught up!

The first order of business after Thanksgiving was to decorate the house for Christmas!

C Girl really did so much of the work this year.

I love all of the special ornaments on our tree. It's also fun to see the kids developing memories of it all as well.

Sometimes, I think that I take too many pictures. But then, other times, I realize how happy they make me and I stop worrying about it. Pictures are a balm to my soul.

Sissy Girl loves laying under the tree!

She hung all of the Santa pictures with a little help from daddy.

B Boy did help decorate some too!

This is such a special ornament honoring Tim's mom that was given to us by my sister in law.

Such a sweet picture :-)

(however, they were practically at each other's throats during trying to get that oh so sweet photo!)

Our Santa collection.

(Tim's mom collected Santas and we have carried on the tradition. We even have a few of hers.)

For advent, we are following a scripture guide that we read everyday. 

It has been a good learning experience for the kids so far! 

We also do a book advent where I wrap 24 of our Christmas books and we read one every night. 

We end with, 'Twas the night before Christmas on Christmas Eve.

The kids were thrilled to open the first book!

The kids have been helping read everything this year!

I love hearing them read from the Bible!

the return of normalcy

Life may actually be getting back into a normal routine here again.  The kids had school Friday and will be there this entire week. Since mid October, they have been in school 6 weeks and out of school 6 weeks.  We have had lots of family time.

Friday night, we ate at one of our favorite restaurants- the Flying Fish.  We had received a gift-card to there as a Christmas gift.  It may have been one of our favorite gifts :-)

As of Saturday night, I have already completely read 4 books this year.  They have not been small books either.  I have definitely rekindled my love of reading lately. 

So, if you want to know what I did Saturday- I read. 

And Tim and the kids watched football.

We went to church yesterday for the first time since Christmas Eve.  It felt like it had been forever! The holidays and the weather have kept us from being there for almost 3 weeks.  I was so blessed by both services yesterday.  It was just what I needed.  

Sometimes I still feel like a small fish in a big pond at our church.  I'm still meeting people!   I still struggle to come out of my shell or know what to say, so I'm thankful for people who introduce themselves if we haven't met, or friends who come and talk to me.

Yesterday, the weather was beautiful!  Sadly, we did not get out and enjoy it because we were under a wind advisory and fire weather warning.  
The wind even tore a piece of siding off of our neighbor's house :(

I hung out with the kids in the playroom for awhile yesterday.  I don't do that very often anymore and it was fun to watch them play and listen to everything that they wanted to tell me.

This morning, we attended the Rise and Shine at the kids' school because C Girl was recognized as being a Kiwanis Terrific Kid for the month of January for her class!  

We are SO proud of her!  Her teacher told us this morning that it's a big deal to pick one kid a month for this award.  She said that C stands out and always works hard.  That meant so much to me!  

I know that academic and athletic awards are always a big deal, but to me, awards for character mean even more.  

This morning has been a quiet one.  I caught up on Downton Abbey from last night.  That show!  It is definitely a drama.  I can't wait to see what next week holds!

I'm also working on meal planning, making a grocery list, laundry, and a couple of other things.

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow because our women's Bible study starts up again!

We have been on a break since November and I'm more than ready to start back up.

I leave you with a couple of pictures of what the kiddos were playing with yesterday===

She was so proud of how she set this table!

Holiday Barbie that was a gift from grandma this Christmas!

this boy- hair that he spiked on his own and wearing a vest that he wore when he was 2.  He cracks me up.

He is crazy good at building all kinds of things with his millions of Legos!

Weekend Sept 20-22

Friday night, we hung out at home with a great Mexican dinner and then looked at older family albums. The kids' reactions were priceless!!!! 

We looked through our wedding album and another one before the kids were born. This age they are at is hilarious to hear what they say about most of the photos. They LOVED when we finally got to photos of them when they were little. 

It made me miss having all of our photos in a tangible source to look at. I stopped putting our photos in albums right after we moved to Bentonville. It gets expensive printing hundreds of pictures (I take SO many). It is also pretty time consuming to put in albums. 

When I used to do it, I would print photos every few months and put in the albums. A friend of mine put on Facebook that she had been looking for a way to make photo books online that was easy and let you use as many photos as you want. 

Sites like Shutterfly and Snapfish limit the number you can use per book. She found blurb.com and shared about it. I really think I'm going to use it to catch up on the rest of 2010 and then 2011, 2012 and this year! Woohoo another project for my list, lol!

Saturday, we got up bright and early to head out to my brother's new house in Oklahoma! I'm so happy for them. It's much bigger than they had and so beautiful! 

I helped my sister in law, Veronica unpacked her kitchen stuff and find places in the cabinets. It was fun and we laughed a lot. And of course, I loved getting to see Johnathan and Noah bear! They jokingly call Noah "C Girl Jr." because they both have similar personality traits! 

The kids helped move stuff from the truck into the garage. They were big helpers! They loved playing with Johnathan and Noah. 

We listened to the Razorback game on the way home and when we got home. The game was SUCH a heart-breaker! So, so sad! I know our atmosphere will be great next week for Texas A&M but man, I wish we were going into it 4-0!

This was Braden's reading material on our travels this weekend. I'm so proud of what a great reader he is and how much he loves to read!

Lots of cousin fun!

Today, we decided to have a fun, family day!  We traveled down to Fayetteville. Our first stop was to eat lunch at Geraldi's.  We had pizza and it was great!

Next, we headed to the University of Arkansas campus to find Tim's name on the senior walk.  It was a gorgeous day, Old Main was beautiful, and it was so great finding his name!

After that, we headed over to the circus!  It was our first time to see a circus and we had lots of fun!  Some of the acts reminded me of parts of the Cirque du Soleil show that we saw in Vegas.

We came home to spend time with Tim's sister who had come to visit and stay the night with us.  We had a nice dinner and visit.  It was great to see so much family this weekend! 

We are tired from our busy day and getting ready for the week. Hope your week is great!