New Years Eve around these parts

Isn't my new kitchen artwork beautiful? My friends gifted it to us for Christmas and I couldn't possibly love it more. That constant reminder of Christ's sacrifice for me and the growth that He gives us, placed in my kitchen. The room of the house that gets the most use.



I hope your New Years Eve celebration was a sweet as ours. We kept it simple with all of our littles running around. They did get to stay up late. Ten o'clock. Wow!

I am thankful for:

The look on her face when she sees ice cream being served.



The joy these two have. Their excitement is contagious!


Homemade ice cream cake to ring in the New Year



Because what could be better than ice cream cake?


A Crazy Costume Competition to end the evening? (Lexi decided to wear her Birthday Suit)


How did you spend your New Years Eve?

Farewell Christmas! Hello 2012!

Goodbye Christmas, see you next year. And may I just say, good riddance? I love Christmas, but I also love seeing it go. I love how BIG my living room feels after I pack the tree up, I love how clean the house looks without piles of odds and ends everywhere.

Christmas this year was interesting for me. We had planned for almost six months to bring my brother and his wife down as a Christmas surprise for my mom. I had very big expectations for Christmas. All my girls with all my siblings and two of my bestest friends.

But, oh, the girls were sick! For weeks. And still are.

Cough, cough, cough.

No long cozy afternoon at my mom's...it was more like one hour of eating bites of delicious food in between puke buckets, and mopping up piles of goo. There was also a lot of tears and whiny children who just didn't feel good. We left my mom's house and went back to my house where we tucked all of our little sickos into bed, and then stared at the wall in a daze.

I had wanted Christmas to be "perfect" and do advent and make sure my girls were focused on Christ more than gifts. Turns out it was I who really needed the lesson. My perfect Christmas dreams were shattered as I wiped runny nose after runny nose. A constant reminder that Christmas isn't about fun and games and advent reading but about a perfect Saviour who came to an imperfect world.

His Holiness meeting our earthly sin and sickness.

As it turns out, Christmas was perfect after all.

And now the New Year is upon us, which in this house means lots of fruits and veggies to clean all of those Christmas carbs out of our system.

My only New Years Resolution is to keep reading through my Bible till I've read every single word. And I won't get there in a year, but that's okay.

What are your resolutions?

What we're up to: Told in Pictures

A whole lot of cute

A whole lot of busy

A little bit of baking

A lot of holidays

Some visiting

A little bit of decorating (and of course, admiring!)

A lot of playing with toys and animals

a whole lot of summer!

Painting squash and ourselves

Beware: If you do not like messes, quit reading now.

I don't mind messes too much. Crafting with the girls is okay and I expect there to be HUGE messes.

Brian just stays away, messy isn't his kind of thing.

I had seen online lots of tutorials about painting pumpkins, which for this stage in life seemed much more doable than carving them. The pumpkins were pricey at the grocery store so I bought about 8 little different squash and let the girls go crazy on them.

How do you feel about messy? yay or nay?

The baby of the house

Just a simple blog post to stretch my blogging muscles again.

A little bit of Lexi to brighten your day!

Just a quick note...for now.

Yes, we are alive and kicking! It's been months since I posted here due to Facebook invading my life, that's where most of my pictures and updates are. I remembered that there are a few people who don't use Facebook but do like to read my blog and see the zaney antics of my girls via this blog (I'm talking to you Nana Cantrell!)

Here's the run down:

Lexi, 22 months old. Her latest adventures include knocking down the Christmas tree, using my makeup brush to clean the toilet bowl, ripping her diaper off and streaking through the house with an amazing amount of toddler-ish energy. She is busy.

Abigail is busy with her usual stuff, saying the funniest things, wearing the coolest clothes, still sucking her thumb to fall asleep, and filling all of her coloring books with her beautiful coloring talent.
Elena is, as usual, practicing her Future Mommy skills. She likes to boss, help and clean. Her favorite word to write is GOD and she can't wait to start school again. She also tries to sneak and turn the Air Conditioner on whenever we're not looking.
That's all for now, and I'll try to update more but I'll need to find an extra 30 minutes to plop into our days in order to do so. Anyone have extra minutes laying around they can gift me for Christmas?

No?

I didn't think so.

Butterflies for preschoolers

I think this craft is pretty self-explanatory, but just in case, here goes:

Coffee filters (we didn't have any, so we just cut round circles out of a crumpled piece of packing paper I found in one of my unpacked boxes. Yes, still a lot of unpacked boxes here.)

Watercolors

Clothes pins

Paint the circles with watercolors, allow to dry, then clip in the middle with a clothes pin. I used scotch tape to tape them to our playroom door, but I think these would make a cute mobile too. Hm....