Merry Christmas

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas.






Santa just came to our house! Natalie's gifts are in red and Bryce's are in Green. It looks like she's getting more, but Bryce's gifts are all tiny. The cradle was made for me by my Grandpa about 20 years ago. I am passing it on to Natalie with new homemade baby bedding.

Blah

I don't know what's up with me. I haven't been my usual cheerful self lately. I love love this time of the year, but I can't seem to enjoy it as much right now. I seem to get cranky super fast and and I am so weepy.

I did have loads of fun at our 2nd annual Christmas cookie exchange last night. It definitely put me in a much better mood. The cookies I made were fantastic!

I got them from Parenting Magazine. Here's a link. They are worth the trouble.
http://www.parenting.com/recipes-article/Recipes/Desserts/Million-Dollar-Caramel-Cookies

I also made these. They are good, but not as good as the others.
http://www.parenting.com/recipes-article/Recipes/Desserts/Smookies

I've been around..

I just don't have much to say.

We went to see Sugar Plum Fairy at the Children's Theater on Sunday. So very cute! The kids loved it and Nate and I loved and it was cheap to see. I am thinking about getting a season pass so we can go to all the plays.

Bryce learned how to ride his bike this weekend as well! He was so happy. My parents are going to surprise him with a new bike for Christmas since his old one was way too small for him.

Oh and we did go see Christmas lights. Natalie loved them. They were most definitely AWESOME!

Awesome!

That's Natalie's new word. Everything is awesome. It's so cute. We drove through our neighborhood tonight looking at the Christmas lights and every single lit house was "Awesome!"

I can't wait to take her to see Christmas lights at the park. It's really going to be awesome.

I am pleased to announce...

that I got 3 cute pictures of the kids and have ordered my Christmas cards. WOOHOO!

And my Christmas village is up. It's all lighted and pretty. :)

And I hung my wreath that I made.

Unfortunately, I now have to clean up my living room, put another layer of mod podge on my Christmas coasters and wrap some more books. We have a tradition at our house that we unwrap a book every night from Dec 1-23. I leave the Night Before Christmas unwrapped so we don't accidently choose it before the 24th.

Sunday morning

I love Sunday mornings. Everyone is sleeping so it's so peaceful right now.

I just got the stocking stuffers out and did a test run on the kids' stockings. I had to make sure I had bought enough stocking stuffers. I like my stockings to be overflowing and the stuff spilling out of them. They were filled to the top but I still need to get Bryce a drawing pad and Natalie a new Care Bears coloring book. I also may throw in a few more art supplies. We can never have enough at that this house. That should make them overflowing. :)

Now I am trying to decide what kind of pancakes to make. We have a tradition that every Sunday I make pancakes and it's hardly ever just regular pancakes. I made cinnamon banana pancakes last Sunday. They were pretty good. I am thinking we may have chocolate chip pancakes. It's the beginning of the Christmas season so we should have something fun, right?

Speaking of which I need to get working on the rest of my Christmas decorations. We got the tree up on Thanksgiving night, but we still have our village to put up. Nate swears he's going to make a side table today to put it on. We shall see. That's if he doesn't sleep until noon and waste half the day away, because he also needs to get outside and finish putting the lights on our house.

My biggest goal for today though is to get my Christmas card picture. I have to order the cards by tonight so I can use a 30% off coupon code that expires today. I have a plan so we'll see if it works. I think I am going to try this morning after their bellies are full. Surely they'll cooperate, right??

I am so tired

And yet I can't sleep. I just got out of bed after laying there for 30 minutes. I feel like I am going to pass out at any second, but the minute I get into bed my mind starts thinking about a hundred different things.

But since I couldn't sleep I found a new blog I am liking. It's all about cooking. Mommy's Kitchen
Of course, that's right up my alley so I'll be pouring over it tonight while I am not sleeping.