Monthly Archives: December 2014

Merry Christmas!!

by December 30, 2014

Hey Guys!  Hope you had a blessed and very Merry Christmas this year!  We had such a great one and enjoyed our low key time together.  It’s been great to have this holiday time to give Nola some focused attention before baby #2 gets here.

I don’t know about all of you, but I’m a huge fan of Christmas cards!  I love getting them in the mail and seeing how everybody’s been up to.  As much as I love getting Christmas Cards I also love figuring out what our cards are going to be each year.  Drinking hot chocolate (other years it probably would be spiked apple cider) with a Christmas movie on in the background and addressing our cards to me is almost therapeutic!  Here’s our cards from this year:

holiday-card-2014-(Conflicted-copy-from-Chris’s-MacBook-Pro-on-2014-12-02)

It seems so weird that Christmas has come and gone.  You plan so many activities and there’s so much hype leading up to the holiday that once it’s over it’s kind of sad.  This Christmas has been the first one, in I don’t know how long…years and years, where we were able to celebrate Christmas at our own place in the morning, later in the afternoon go to a family Christmas event AND THEN go back home just our little family.  We are really enjoying this living closer to family thing!  But we still hate the winter weather though, don’t think that will ever change. 🙂

I don’t go too overboard with Christmas decorations because frankly I don’t like all the work it takes to take everything down, but we made sure to have pops of Christmas charm throughout our place.  Here are a few photos if you care to see:

DSC_0004_2 i have learned that my list of advent activities was much too ambitious!  next year i am scaling it back so it doesn’t seem so busy and stressful trying to do everything!  we  sure didn’t get to everything, but we tried.  i have to say, our most favorite activity was giving cookies to our neighbors, nola loved it! DSC_0005 DSC_0016 we don’t have a fireplace 🙁 so i hung up removable contact paper and drew one!  don’t worry nola bear santa’s coming to town!! DSC_0017 and last but not least our very low-key christmas tree 

And just for fun here’s a post on how we decorated for Christmas last year!

Christmas Activity Fun

by December 20, 2014

Hey guys!  Hope you all are surviving this Holiday Season and able to enjoy this special time.  To be completely honest this week has been a rough one for us.  CJ got food poisoning so was out for a couple of days and then Nola got a nasty cold.  A toddler who can’t breath out of their nose = no sleep for anyone.  I also had a whirlwind scenario where our shipment of christmas postcards got misplaced during delivery, which slightly upset me then I kind of was like, ‘ok I guess I don’t have to worry about addressing them all!’  But they were located the next day.  And to top it all off I’m on this last minute project freak mode recruiting CJ along the way to help me (he just informed me I’m the worse person to work with btw, i’m like what????? he’s probably right, poor thing) which results in us being up in the wee hours trying to complete everything.  It’s a complete whack job of a life over here these days.  BUT on the flip side we realized how we take our health for granted and so thankful for the bodies God has given us.

Despite all these misfortunate events we are still trying to do as many fun Christmas activities as possible.  Most of these activities occurred last week before everyone got sick.  We were able to make and decorate salt dough ornaments for the Christmas tree.  Went to a special breakfast to see Santa at the Heidel House.  And our sweet friends came over to decorate ginger bread houses.  Please note that if decorating ginger bread houses with toddlers it would behoove you to have the houses assembled ahead of time.  Toddlers have no time to wait for frosting to dry.

This week we have watched a lot of Christmas movies.  Nola’s favorite is the old school Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  I can’t help but love the elf who wishes he was a dentist, bless that little elf’s heart.  And don’t get me on the misfit song, it is so good.  I have to make some cookies for church and plan on passing them to our neighbors as well.  Sadly I can’t have my little helper assist because of her nasty cold and what’s weird is it makes me sad.  She’s my official ‘try to’ dump all the measured ingredients in the mixing bowl.  Guys what am I going to do when she leaves for college, I mean come on, I’m sad over here because she can’t help me make cookies?!  I’m a lost cause.

Here’s photos of some of the activities we had been up to if you care to see:

DSC_0005 DSC_0020 helping decorate her own little tree! photo (6) photo (7) DSC_0053 DSC_0059_2 IMG_5108 IMG_5098

Thankfully we are all on the mend and ready for more fun Christmas activities to be done.  Also a side note, but worth mentioning, around this time (34 weeks) when pregnant with Nola I was in labor!!!  Crazy to think about that.  We can’t wait to meet this sweet baby.

Friday Ramblings

by December 13, 2014

Happy Friday guys!  We have a lot of fun Christmas activities planned this weekend and I hope to finish the rest of our Christmas gifts.  The weather is suppose to be quite warm for this time of the year and I’m pretty excited about that!  For you CA friends to you it would still be considered cold, but I’ll take whatever I can!  Here’s some random thoughts or things we’ve been on up to lately:

–  I am the HUGEST fan of Taylor Swifts new cd.  It is so fun and always puts me in a good mood, get it if you haven’t yet!

–  On our road trip to NC for Thanksgiving I was so excited to finally listen to the podcast Serial.  It’s a very popular podcast which is actually the fastest downloaded podcast in the history of ITunes.  It’s re-looking at an investigation of a 1999 Baltimore murder and it’s fascinating!  CJ and I would discuss and analyze things over and over again throughout the trip, we are slightly obsessed.  CJ actually listened to them all already but he was willing to listen to them all again with me, he’s sweet like that.  Next week is the last podcast to the series and I need to catch up, eeck!

–  I know, I know, I am ashamed to admit that I have complained numerous times about Nola’s sleeping habits since transitioning her to a big bed, sorry guys!  But here I am again, I just need to vent!  It’s been so rough.  Back in the day we would throw her in the crib at 8:30pm, she would fall asleep on her own and wake up around 6:30am.  Ok, so we didn’t ‘throw’ her in the crib, but truthfully she probably would prefer that, she’s a wild one like that.  But getting to sit on the sofa and have a couple of hours of your own time at the end of the day, that was AWESOME!!  That is now long gone and we are lucky if she finally is asleep by 10 with multiple times running into our room in the middle of the night.  I know once the baby comes there will be no free time anyways and it’s a phase, but pray for us!!  All I have to say is baby #2 is in the crib until they are 5, crib for life!!  Once she’s in high school I will be wishing she was in this phase versus going out and me freaking out she’s safe, but I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m tired!

–  I’m thinking that it’s probably all of these things: it being my second pregnancy, I’m in the third trimester and that I’m old, but I’m a hot mess lately.  I have back issues, bad pelvic pressure and usually a pulled muscle in my leg (I know weird).  Today at toddler and parent dance class I pretty much just sat or stood there like a log.

–  If you do an Advent Calendar with family activities I am learning that what works best for us is one activity for every 2 days.  Next year I will be doing that!  For example, making salt dough ornaments, we needed day 1 to make the ornaments and day 2 to decorate them.  Plus it gives me leeway if we don’t get around doing an activity everyday, that has happened.

–  I’d love thoughts from any of you on what you think about getting an appliance for juicing or making smoothies.  I’m currently leaning towards a juicer but still on the fence, one of our new years resolutions on being more healthy!

That’s all that is going on in my jumbled brain right now.  And when Nola wakes up in the middle of the night I crave and think of pancakes EVERY night.  It’s so strange.  Hope you are all well and have a festive weekend!

Keeping It Real Here During the Holiday Season

by December 8, 2014

Hey Guys!  Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  We have so much to be thankful for this year and amazed by God’s love and undeserved blessings He keeps pouring on our family.  We were able to spend time with my Husband’s family this year in North Carolina.  It was great catching up with everybody and Nola had a wonderful time.  For all of you who have both sides of your family living close by you are very lucky!!  Visiting family or hosting during the Holidays are all great things, but it involves a lot more planning and work.  I sometimes get envious, not going to lie.  The great thing was we celebrated Christmas early and it was just as fun, even if it was a month early.  Good thing because we are really starting to think that our Christmases’ need to be celebrated at our home with our little fam bam.

We decided to drive (why oh why are flights so expensive during the Holiday season!!  shaking fist up in the air) but we couldn’t have asked for a better drive to and from and Nola was amazing!  The trip back however, I feel kind of did me in emotionally and physically.  I was so tired and just felt overwhelmed with all the stuff I wanted to do for the Christmas Season.

Christmas Cards, getting and decorating the Christmas tree and putting together the advent calendar are pretty time sensitive things that either need to be done NOW, in my opinion, or it just doesn’t pay to do, especially with the baby coming.  So when we got home I got busy and felt stressed getting those things all together.  What helped me cope with the things I wanted to accomplish before Christmas was we scaled back on family activities we were hoping to do for advent, our tree is more of collaboration of what we had on hand have versus the vision of what I hoped it would be and our advent calendar starts on December 4th.  That’s my life friends.

Honestly one thing I have going for me is I normally don’t stress about those things and was surprised how I was feeling.  Can I blame being in my third trimester?  🙂 I hate that I let it get to me like it did and take away from what this Christmas Season is all about.  For some advent activities we are donating to our local food shelter, bringing items to Ronald McDonald House and going through clothes and toys to donate.  I would love any other suggestions on activities you do with your kiddos on teaching them the meaning of giving and serving.  To be fair since Nola is only 2 she is a bit young to fully understand all of this, but I think it’s still a great thing to start young.

Thanks for letting me vent a little and I hope you all are enjoying this wonderful time of the year and OK scaling back if you are starting to feel stressed out!

Here’s a photo of our Nola girl that Uncle Matt took while we were in NC.

Nola