Some favorites...

These are some of my favorite things that are around our house right now. 

A favorite decoration that reminds me what this season is really about...

And a favorite non-religious decoration that the kids love...

Apparently Ezra needs a little more exposure to the real Christmas story, as his manger scene (below) is a little inappropriate...  (that's Mary in the stable alone with a wise man)

One of my favorite Christmas books that my mom bought for us a few years ago...

One of our family traditions that we had when I was growing up was to do one big puzzle over the Christmas vacation so I am trying to do that this year.  I am the only one working on it so far so it could be a whole winter project...

We are going to be celebrating Christmas with Tim's family on Christmas night.  We also get to go see his brother and sister-in-law and our niece and nephew today for some relaxed fun.  Our church is having a candlelight service tonight and no church tomorrow.  I am looking forward to all of that.    I am feeling much more in the Christmas mood after being able to stay home yesterday and let the kids play and do a little Christmas baking.  We made gingerbread men from scratch yesterday and I was able to make somy yummy snacks for our small group Bible study Christmas party that we had last night.  We are very blessed to have a wonderful group of 4 other couples that we have Bible study with once a week.  We had an awesome time with them last night at the party.  Without kids!!  I'm glad the shopping is done and now its time to relax and enjoy time with family and contemplate the birth of Christ, the real reason for the season...

Happy Birthday Grammy!

We celebrated Grammy Brinkley's birthday last weekend.  I attempted to make my first rolled up cake recipe, and it was a success!  Chocolate filling with almond cake and whipped cream frosting!

 We drove downtown Seattle to see a display of gingerbread houses that are in a hotel lobby.  They were definately made by professionals and were definately amazing!

Cute smile!

Before...

After....

He even talks a little funny now!

Decorating the Christmas tree!

November

Thanksgiving was a little sad for me this year.  With all of my family in Michigan and Florida, and Tim's parents in Texas, it was pretty quiet.  We did get invited to have Thanksgiving with some friends, which we did.  We had fun and it was so nice of them to have us over, but it was still a bit of a struggle for me not to have any of my extended family around.  It was a good chance to think about what we are thankful for, though.  Its hard for me to really appreciate and be properly thankful for a healthy family, a warm house, the jobs we have.  So easy to take those big things for granted. 

 I was also thankful that I got almost 2 weeks away from subbing since Tim's mom went out of town.  It was very relaxing to only have to worry about taking care of the kids and the house and not rushing out to schools in the mornings.   

 I did take some of that time to do some Christmas shopping and to do some mystery shopping.  It was a nice opportunity to earn some extra cash.  We are going to use it to replace our portable dvd player which broke a few weeks ago.  It is almost a necessity in our house on long car trips, airplane rides, or for poor Ezra who has to sit for very long periods in gyms for wrestling right now.  I even went to Walmart for black Thursday sales to get a new player, and was there for 3 hours in the craziness (never done that before, probably will never do it again) only to get it home and realize it doesn't have a battery you can charge.  That is one of the functions we needed.  I didn't do enough research.  Thankfully Walmart took it back 2 days later.  We are going with a different model from Best Buy.

I did find these nifty photo holders at Kohls.  We are using them to put spelling lists/memory verses/etc at a place on the table where the kids can see them while they are eating.  This bit of organization is really helping me not lose those important papers and is helping the learning happen more easily.  Ezra is learning our address and cell phone numbers!

We also are still surprised to find how long the leaves stay on the trees out here.  Our fall leaves were finally all down and we did the final cleanup this weekend.  I still can't believe we were raking leaves in December!  So nice to have it done though.  My arms are still sore today from the weekend's work.  We also have been surprised to find several of the mornings this last week to see a hummingbird at our feeder in our window!  We looked online and discovered that there is one kind, Anna's hummingbird, that stays here all year.  I will be filling my feeder today so she will keep coming back!

Getting our craft on

Anyone I have talked to about crafts with my kids will know that my kids are not big crafters.  Much to my lament.  I don't think of myself as a very creative person but with so many good ideas online, who needs creativity?  I can follow step by step directions with the best of them.  However, my children are pretty resistant to anything that has to do with crafts.  They would much rather be shooting or destroying things rather than creating anything.  That is why I was pleasantly surprised that lately a few little crafty projects have gone well. 

This first picture is the result of a contest I announced with Austin and Christian - who could build the coolest lego ship with only one color of legos.  One of these is mine, one is Austin's.  I'll let you guess which is which.  Christian and Ezra made some too but their ships got destroyed before I could  take a picture.  I wouldn't classify this as a craft, but it was a fun little project.  Anyone who is a mom reading this I'm sure can understand the love/hate relationship I have with legos.

This was a marble painting project Christian and Ezra did but they didn't last very long at it.  I sort of had to make them finish.  Oh well.

Christian has been surprising me in that he has enjoyed sitting down to color.  I have never had a child that likes to color.  He actually finished a whole page or two and let me color with him.  He even stuck with it for 10-15 min.  I really enjoy those moments when my children are occupied with quiet activities.

This is one of Chrisitan's pages from school.  He has been really excited about learning to write letters, numbers, and simple words.

 ...but what I really loved was the doodling I found on the back.  He even wrote about me!

These are our "in-process" Christmas ornaments for this year.  I picked something very simple which would hopefully mean less headaches!  Ezra's penguins are what we are calling "penguins in the dark".