Christmas Evening

A tradition in hubby's family is to delay stocking stuffer time until evening!  So in most cases opening the stockings is like another Christmas around  here. I did check little man's stocking before giving it to him. Grandparents have a tendency to put too much in it so I have to take stuff out and bring it out a little bit at a time.  Not to mention WE do not need a SUGAR overload!







[caption id="attachment_1046" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="little man's is to the far left and mine is to the far right"][/caption]



 

 

[caption id="attachment_1047" align="aligncenter" width="199" caption="chillin'"][/caption]

After the fun of opening stockings it was time to decorate Jesus' Birthday Cake!  Of course little man choose the STAR shape pan for the mini cakes. He had so much decorating! It was a good feeling sitting around the table watching everyone decorate their own cake. Then we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus. So sweet listening to a child's voice!







[caption id="attachment_1048" align="aligncenter" width="199" caption="icing the mini star cake"][/caption]



 

 







[caption id="attachment_1049" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="everyone got to decorate their own star cake"][/caption]



 

 







[caption id="attachment_1050" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="yummy!"][/caption]



 

 

Christmas Morning

I love Christmas Morning!!! So much fun to watch little ones discover presents under the tree! OF COURSE our little one woke us up at 6:00 am!!!! UGH! I was praying for a 9:00 am of opening gifts but you just have to roll with it. This year was all about trains. We (hubby and myself) got him the train table and  hubby's mom and dad got him the Chuggington trains with a carrying case. My brother and sister in law got him a collapsible travel train set. We are not BIG into Thomas but he does know about Chuggington. I like the characters better in Chuggington than Thomas. Trains are trains. This little boy knows a lot about trains.





[caption id="attachment_1035" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="discovering his train table for the first time"][/caption]



 





[caption id="attachment_1036" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="thank you mommy and daddy"][/caption]



 





[caption id="attachment_1037" align="aligncenter" width="199" caption="he loves to open gifts"][/caption]



 





[caption id="attachment_1038" align="aligncenter" width="199" caption="oh wow more trains"][/caption]



 





[caption id="attachment_1039" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="a travel train set! thank you Uncle John and Aunt Amy"][/caption]



This guy never sits down for more than 10 minutes so once the trains came out I did not hear a peep out of him for 45 minutes. I kept looking to see if he was still alive! It was a great Christmas Morning!

Everything Merry

[caption id="attachment_1022" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="making homemade sugar cookies for Santa and Jesus!"][/caption]

Our festives began early Friday making my homemade sugar cookie dough so it could chill for awhile until ready for cookie cutting time. It is so easy to make these sugar cookies and I love that my son loves to bake right along with me. He loves to help roll out the dough with the rolling pin.

[caption id="attachment_1023" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="my lil helper"][/caption]

We made cookies both for Santa and Jesus. Santa got the snowman and Jesus the angel. We left a note for Santa and Jesus. All month my guy has been taking about Santa coming in a sleigh and Jesus parking his car in the garage. So the note he wanted me to write included both those thoughts to Santa and Jesus. Here at our house we have really talked about Jesus so he seems to think that Jesus will also come to our house when Santa is to come. I really like his thought process. Don't ya just love the innocence of children? So precious!

[caption id="attachment_1024" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="a note for Santa and Jesus"][/caption]

After we placed our cookies by the fireplace we began our Holiday book reading! We have several books we have been reading but only a few we have pick for reading before Christmas Day! You can see both books in the above picture. One focuses on Jesus birth and the other is a classic Santa read. We all sat around the Christmas tree listening to daddy read to us all.

[caption id="attachment_1025" align="aligncenter" width="199" caption="sitting on daddy's lap"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1027" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="intently listening to the story"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1029" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="all wrapped and ready to go"][/caption]

Gather to Gobble

Happy Thanksgiving from our turkey to yours!!!

 

 

waiting.....*sigh*

Hello

Yep, I am still here! Kinda reminds me of that song we sing at church.."God is not dead, No! He is alive....." Umm, yeah like that only Mrs. C is not dead, NO! She is alive!  Okay sorry for the trailing off ...

Anyway, where have I been? Working. working and yet more work! Plus, hubby did get a job in Austin. Yes, that is right you heard me, Austin! Of course some of you already know this since you do see me in r.l. No we are not moving to Austin yet. I don't even know if we will for sure or when I would know. Hubby's contract job is for a year so we saw no need in uprooting the family. We have been seeing each other on the weekends. That is all coming to a very short stop. He will be on call for a couple of weekends so we will go as short as 14 days or as long as 21 days of not seeing each other. YIKES!  How are we coping you ask? Pretty good! Much better this weekend then the past few together. I think we may have found our groove. It sometimes takes awhile to get into a "normal" routine. HA HA, what is normal?! I guess you could say I am a single parent Monday-Friday and sometimes longer than that.

So the last time I left off we were on vacation. I am so sorry to drop the ball on that one but I believe you got the drift. Obviously, I am not going to be able to catch you up in one short post so....

I will leave you with this...Lately, I have been thinking long and hard about what is needed in our life. Order. Order and yet more ORDER! It has become vitally important now that our time together is so short but sweet! I have been working on making things run smoother. Heck we could all tighten up our ships a little. I am not necessarily talking about "clean, perfect" houses. I am talking order or as some people call it "organized."  Where everything has a place! So, I have begun the...dum de dum....Office! EEEEKKK. I said it! the O word that is typically not mentioned in my house. Yes, ladies and maybe gentlemen I have confessed my weakness to you(hangs head low). Okay maybe I have more than one weakness. Anyway, let's focus on one thing. I(we) need order there! It is where bills are paid, photos are created, blogs are faithful(cough-cough), beautiful books are displayed, and just maybe a cup of coffee is sipped. I would say the Office here at my house is pretty important to keep in some form of order. Maybe you call it something else. The study, the junk room, the place where you use to dream of___, the cave, the napping room, the scrap-booking room, or the whatever room!! You know the room and you know you need to get to it! So do it! I am and let me tell you I have invested in some help so hang with me to see the process.

Oh and one last thing...my little man reading his favorite magazine. Daddy is so proud!





love your unfaithful blogger

Our Trip Day 6 continued...

again it speaks for itself....

Atlantic side

Pacific side

crossing to the other side

Do not travel beyond this point when bighorn sheep are present.

yes, they were that close!

just beautiful!

Our Trip Day 6

I think Day 6 speaks for itself!















More to come......

Our Trip Days 4-5

We enjoyed our surroundings while staying in Estes Park and of course my time with my family. One morning hubby and I went on a nice walk/bike ride. I walked while pushing Jonathan in a stroller and hubby rode his bike. It was pretty steep in some places. It took us a total of 3 hours. We walked/biked the 6 miles around the lake and walked/biked around town. It was so much fun. The interesting part of my walk with my beautiful red head was the "concerned" people stopping me on my trail. People would flag me down to let me know that my son is not only red but a red head at that. They were really "concerned" about how red he looked and thought that I had forgotten the sun screen. I would politely tell them "yes, he has sun screen on but he is hot natured. that is one of the reasons he does wear a hat on days such as these." Then they would take a step back to say " oh, well you know that red heads burn easily." My evil side wanted to say " Yes, m'am the red headed manual they passes out at the hospital seem to indicate that as well." However, my good twin won over with a polite "thank you for your concern."

nice!

our view while on our walk/bike ride

I'll  live in one of those.

Yummy!

looks like fun

After our fun day around town by bike and stroller we had dinner with my brother and his family. It was such a great time! I have missed my brother so much but count my blessings that he is still with me here on this earth. Plus, my sister in law is the best. He did good by picking her. We are so grateful that God sent Amy to us.

cousins

basketball with Uncle John David

Troy and little man

just a little wrestle time

It was really neat to see my little man with the cousins. He really enjoyed playing with older boys and would want to model what they do. I just wished we lived close by each other so we could enjoy more moments such as these. I am so grateful to savor every moment. It also reminded me of how little man seems to really enjoy the company of other kids around him. There is something to be said for having brothers and sisters around you when growing up. I love that he has so much fun with others.