Some Random Pics

Sam showing off his new hat

I know she is almost out of the picture, but the look on her face is so cute!

Sammy and Amy playing patty cake. No matter how I try, whenever I take pictures of Amy, the only look I can get is this one that is part scared, part curious. She really does have other expressions, they are just difficult to capture :)

And the reason why I ran and grabbed my camera. She was sitting by herself in the living room being quiet and I went to check on her, she was laying completely folded in half with her head on the floor. But when I came back, she had decided she wanted to try eating her socks. Still cute.

Christmas 2011

Look!! It's FINALLY done! My family wall is finally complete. Remember when I first came up with the idea when we were in the old house, nearly two years ago? Then this spring my sister and I finally put up the vinyl "Families Are Forever" our friends cut for us for Christmas a year before? Well now we have nice frames and the pictures to fill them AND they are up on the wall. I am sooo excited!! All that I have left for this wall is two black shelves to go on either side of the family picture to put my Willow Tree figurines and the molds of Kaylie's hand and foot and we are DONE! I am also really, really excited we finally got a rack of hooks for the laundry room so we can hang up our coats and leave the front coat closet for guests!

Our new table and chairs set and ready for our company for Christmas Eve dinner. Unfortunately, there was a mix-up and they were only able to join us after dinner for a few gifts, a Christmas movie and book and some good chatting. We decided to buy this table and chairs with the giftcard Robert's work gave us because we were going to have five extra people for Christmas Eve and the week after New Years we are having Robert's cousin and her family stay with us for a few days. They are bringing seven extra people, so we felt it was worth the investment. While the table is not in use, it will be in my craft room downstairs.

Sammy and Amy on Christmas Eve in their new jammies (I made the pants for Sam) and with their gifts from Uncle Mitch and clan.

All ready for Christmas morning. If you look at the stockings, you will notice Robert's mom was able to get Amy's stocking done for this year - I was so excited to have them all!!

Sam with his big, huge tractor. Daddy spoils him like crazy! This thing is so big and heavy Sam can barely carry it :) I have to put this story in somewhere so we will always remember: we got Sam a Stomp Rocket. It is basically a hose hooked to a stand and you put the (hard) foam-tipped rocket on the stan and stomp on the pouch on the other end of the hose, making the rocket fly with air power. Of course it only took Robert milliseconds to figure out to hold the stand to make the rockets fly down the hall into the bathroom. This was working great until he decided it would be funny to start hitting mommy with the rockets (ok, so maybe I encouraged this a little to see Sam laugh) As is usual, it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Unfortunately it was my turn to get hurt. The rocket hit me directly in the eye. Poor Sam was so sad to see me hurt so bad, but I am ok and we are now supervising the stomp rocket very closely to make sure no one else gets hurt. Not so funny when it happened (it hurt like crazy - I didn't see it coming) but now we can all laugh about it!

Amy with some of her toys.

Sam got a monster bowling set. The bowling pins are monsters. We thought he would like this because he loved bowling when we went with Jake and Stacey a while back. And this is where I stopped taking pictures so we could just enjoy the morning.

The kiddos in their Christmas Sunday outfits. Amy got a new dress, Mommy got a new shirt and boots and Daddy and Sam got matching red ties. We enjoyed a nice relaxed morning with Cinnabon cinnamon rolls (I got the recipe from a friend) for breakfast. Went and enjoyed church and took a poinsettia to Kaylie's headstone. Then we just kinda chilled the rest of the day watching a few of our new movies and enjoying being together. We hope you all had a wonderful and memorable Christmas with your families as well.

Christmas Mayhem

So we have been busy just keeping up with all the holiday things that go on during this time of year. Mainly shopping and projects. One that has been in the works for over a year is this advent calendar. I purchased all the materials last year and began planning out how I wanted to make it. Then Christmas passed and I lost motivation, so everything went into a box that was left alone until this week. I really like how it came out and I am planning to add little cards to each slot of something the kids (and us adults, too I guess) can do each day as their gift to Christ. It is an idea I heard at our RS activity this month and I really liked how it helps to remember Christ each day leading up to Christmas, not just on Christmas Eve or during FHE.

After finishing it, I think it needs just a bit more, so I may add some vinyl numbers on the pouches, but we will have to see. All in all, I am glad to have it done and to have one more thing checked off my "To Do" list. I also made a play dress for Lilly, but don't have a picture of her in it yet, so stay tuned for that because I think it turned out super cute!!

Sam being silly with his grapes the other day.

It being Christmastime means loads of goodies! We did sugar cookies with the Potters at their house and then they came to ours to decorate gingerbread houses (Sam and I had done the gingerbread ourselves a week or so before) and the kids and mommies had lots of fun! Now that it is the week of Christmas we have been baking like crazy each day to have plenty of cookies and candies to do plates for friends and neighbors and just wait for the big day to come. Today they had Santa come visit at the library and you can see a picture of Sam on his lap on my facebook page. He wasn't quite as excited about it this year as he was last year, but oh well.

Projects and Sickness

This week started off with Daddy leaving for his big hunting trix to Texas. Of course while he was gone we all got sick and have been fighting it the rest of the week. We had fun this week getting the bulk of the Christmas shopping done. We also took some time to make some gingerbread and will be decorating houses with our friends later this week. The picture above is of the Lethal Peppermint Chocolate cake I did for my niece for her birthday which is today! Happy birthday, Natalie! She had asked for this flavor of cake and for it to be a nativity cake. Umm, no idea how I would do that, so we cheated and bought a nativity set to put on top of the cake and to be the birthday girl's present as well. It's the best I could come up with in two days and being sick, so hopefully she likes it.

Sam and Amy are both doing well. This little gal eats like a horse, it can be tough to keep up sometimes! She has really taken a liking to this little item a friend of mine told me about a while ago. It is a mesh pouch that you can put things in for the baby to chew on and get the taste of without actually eating the thing like bananas or strawberries. Sam loves hearing "his" Christmas songs from preschool on the radio.

And a few of the projects I have undertaken this week were a girl's dress for a friend (picture to come when it is completely finished) and replacing the zipper on Sam's winter coat. I was so mad he broke the zipper completely off this awesome coat that I found for only $10 and I really didn't want to go out and find another one, probably at full price. So I went to JoAnn's and used a coupon so if it didn't work, I only spent $1.85 trying to fix it. At first it looked like it might be tricky, but it worked quite nicely and now I don't have to buy him a new one! This week we will finish off the last few items of Christmas shopping and I will start working on a quilt for my nephew for Christmas (hopefully I can get it finished in time!) and Captain America PJ pants for Sam.