These are a few of my favorite things....

...other than the opportunity to be together as a family for 2 whole days (BJ didn't end up having to work Christmas Eve!!!) and the wonder and beauty and excitement that have filled up every corner of our home for the past month or so....

Oh, I just LOVE Christmas!

But then again, who doesn't? Right?

Ok, so here are a couple more of my favorite things this Christmas:

*drinking hot chocolate right before bed on Christmas Eve...

...in Christmas jammies!

*Our beautiful tree!
Bad picture but it was beautiful, full of homemade ornaments (some broken or injured or rearranged aka "hidden" to Cambree's delight) and not so perfectly spaced strands of multicolored lights. Oh, and I can't forget the BJ Angel on top. Sorry there's not a good picture of him. It's pretty cute.
*Reading Christmas stories at bed time,
*Again no picture, but also telling the Christmas story through the scriptures and with the Little People Nativity set (minus the Baby Jesus, we had to borrow one from another set) and primary songs mixed with the regular Christmas carols....

*Christmas morning!

*The biggest reactions for the seemingly small things like a pack of gum! or a clementine! or an Ariel toothbrush! or a shower spongy thingy (just like Mom's)!

*Ah, but here (below) are my all time favorite memories from Christmas this year.

These faces.

So happy.

It was indeed hard being away from all of our families. BJ and I kept thinking we should hop in the car and drive to Grandma's house. But, different as it was for us, we loved being home this year.

This is the picture that should have gone into our Christmas cards!

And, for my record, (so I will remember what we went through while taking this picture) I'd like to note how many devices we used to hold our camera, which has a curved bottom, up right. Head bands, one of Cambree's shoes, a cow stolen from one of the nativity sets, several books, a jewelry box, a Playbill, wooden blocks....we got creative.

Christmas Advent

Well, I did it. I found a picture of a really cool project and actually completed it successfully.
Well, mostly.

I convinced my mom to do one too and she ended up making 3 in less time than it took me to make this one. But I am a beginner. This was my first big machine applique project and my very first attempt at free motion quilting. I love the look of free motion quilting and I plan on getting better in future projects. If only I could get my little sewing machine to help me out. :)

I don't know if you can tell but the number squares are actually little pockets. We have cute little Christmas quotes and Mad Gabs and fill-in-the-blanks in ours, one to read each day (Thanks Mom!)
I love the fabrics. It is so colorful and cheerful on our drab wall.

I think I just might keep it up year round.

I found the project (as well as many others for my "future project" list) here.

Thanks for the Giving

We have been blessed so much by visits from The Grandmas and Grandpa. My (Julie's) parents surprised us a couple months ago with the news that they would be joining us for Thanksgiving. While far away at the time, it has been something I have been looking forward to eagerly for months. As it happens, their week here was wonderful but it was over way too quickly and now I am still mourning their departure. But what am I saying? This is a Thanksgiving post after all.

From the moment Grandma and Grandpa walked in the door, our girls were nonstop grins and giggles (ok, so maybe that describes me too). Grins for Grandma who shared her eyebrow pencil and lip gloss and all the gum from her purse and who read them story after story, never mind the pushing and shoving for the best section of her lap. And Silly Grandpa Mark, for tickling and horsey rides and popcorn and for teaching them what it means to be "full of bologna".

We enjoyed a small, somewhat quiet Turkey Day from what we have been used to and the food, if I do say so myself, was excellent. (I definitely recommend brining your turkey next year if you haven't yet tried it. The girls particularly liked the legs!) The boys ran a 5k in the am in frigid temps and us ladies came along -- shivering-- to cheer them on. On Friday instead of hitting the shops, we went to our apple/pumpkin farm and cut down our Christmas tree. Chilly again but lots of fun keeping up with that tradition. I think I would be sad someday if we are unable to have a live tree in our home. Ah, but I am so grateful for it. It looks beautiful, smells beautiful and adds so much life and cheer to our front room. Cambree still oohs and ahhs every time we turn on the lights and has loved more than one ornament to death. Haylee is very good at watering the tree and reminding me to vacuum up the needles or plug in the lights.

This holiday season has filled our 2 little girls with wonder and it is so fun to watch. I can't wait to see what the rest of the season will bring!

Halloween II

We continued on with our haunted gingerbread houses. Unlike last year, however, I had LOTS of help. We invited a family from our ward over to join us and while it was a little chaotic and there was little sticky bits of candy absolutely everywhere for a week or so...it was all expected and who cares. I think we will definitely keep up the tradition.

More goodies....the chocolate cookies with the candy corn kisses were yummy. A nice variation on the PB ones and...

You can't not do Halloween sugar cookies can you? Well, we can't.

Ok, isn't this cool (despite the horrible pic)? I got the idea here and I really like how it turned out. Because of BJ's current occupation, however, we referred to it as our "Freaky Pharmacy"

Surprise, surprise. # 2 is the one getting gooey and # 1 is staying as far away as possible from the yucky stuff. She did, however, give very explicit directions to how her Hello Kitty jackolantern was to be carved.

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Did you know that November is NaBloWriMo ??? Or, for us not-in-the-knowers, National Blog Writing Month.

It's an annual
challenge to post on your blog each and every day throughout the 30 days of
November.

My watch says it is the 3rd, which means I am 2 days late. But I don't really care. I think I will still try to post something every day for the remainder of this month. Don't worry, I will try my absolute hardest to keep things interesting. Mind you, it might not be as interesting to you as it is to me. Oh well. Maybe I'll share some deep thoughts too and that would be interesting.

I think I will start with Halloween.

Everyone else is doing it. I did go a bit overboard with Halloween this year so I have a lot to post/share and so I will probably split it up a bit. Also, I will go in reverse order. So, here are the kiddies in their costumes...

I did make Haylee's costume. 100 % by myself. I thought once or 10 times about sending it out to my mom to finish but I didn't. It was hard, well, not difficult in method really, difficult in trying to learn the language of a Simplicity Pattern (simple my eye!) I do much better with tutorials than patterns. No tissue paper either, hate that stuff. Anyway it is sooo not perfect so please don't look too closely but I think it turned out cute. I like the wings the best.

Also...Haylee just floated and danced around the place whenever she put it on, I half expected her to burst out with "I Feel Pretty" even though she didn't. But wearing it made her feel special and
I love that!
Was it worth it? For her, yes!

The Butterfly

Say Happy Halloween!

One more note of interest. We were warned ahead of time (and I'm glad we were) that St. Louis does Trick-or-Treating a little different than most places. The candy handerouters request a joke or riddle before they will give you your candy. Kind of fun.

Here are some of my favorites that I heard:

What do you call a monster who ate your mother?

Gladiator (Glad he ate her)

What's the difference between roast beef and green peas?

You can roast beef but you can't pee green.
(I beg to differ. I knew someone who did just that, once, not roast beef, the other one. Just beware of gummy bears mixed with bubblegum ice cream.)

Another one I thought would be really funny but the kid's mother stopped him ("I SAID to keep it CLEAN!") before he got to the punch line explaining to me that "it's not my fault, he has older brothers." I wanted to ask her whose fault it was that he had older brothers but I thought better of that idea.

Happy 3 Days after Halloween!!!

WHOSE KID IS THIS???

It is a train.

I know that because she "chugged" her arm up and down while going "whoo wooo" when I asked her what she was doing.

Also, if you notice our shiny our floor is in the first picture it is not because I just waxed it (heck, I barely get a chance to swiffer it before another episode like this takes place) but I might as well have. It is PAM. I caught her at the end of the act and she was spraying it all over... much the same way I do with Febreze (and I do use A LOT of Febreze around here so she knows how to do it) ...only, it was PAM,
not Febreze.

Just a note, many of you may assume that I just left the PAM out, like on the floor or something in plain reach.
I didn't.