Hopscotch

...or, as my four-year-old named it, "Hop-chalks." Hey, it makes more sense to me.

Advent Tents

To celebrate the season, I came up with daily activities that our family could do together. I've never had much room for a big advent calendar so I kept it simple this year. I wanted to incorporate our favorite traditions, some easy seasonal activities, and special treats for the month. We're loving it!

I printed out the activities on card stock and glued pretty scrapbook paper to the back of each. Then I folded them like little tents. I found my printable template at Living Locurto.

Every morning, we turn the next tent over to see what's on the schedule.

Here they are in order.

1. Let's go see Santa tonight.
2. We're going to the Christmas parade!
3. You get to eat a few Christmas cookies.
4. We'll make a handprint craft together.
5. Pick a board game to play with the family.
6. Let's make hot chocolate together.
7. Mommy will read you a Christmas story.
8. We'll watch The Polar Express tonight.
9. We're going to the movies! How about The Muppets?
10. Let's wake up early to go see Santa at the tractor store.
11. Read a Christmas book.
12. We're going to make paper snowflakes today.
13. Make Christmas cards for the widows at church.
14. Help Mommy deliver the cards we made yesterday.
15. We'll make a batch of gingerbread play dough and play with it.
16. Let's make gingerbread men.
17. Drive around to see the Christmas lights.
18. Make your annual "My Favorite Things" ornament.
19. Angel Tree shopping
20. Listen to our Christmas books on audio.
21. Help Mommy make goodies for the neighbors.
22. Let's make peanut butter and bird seed ornaments for the birds.
23. Our Christmas Eve (Friday night)
24. Our Santa Claus Morning (Saturday)
25. Christmas Day

Thanksgiving Recap and It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like...

How's that for a title?

Thanksgiving went a little something like this...

1. Tuesday... Stayed up really late to finish packing. Realized my red shoes that had just come in that afternoon and were bought specifically for Wednesday's family portraits, didn't fit. At all. Like, wouldn't even go over my toes. And then I fell to the ground trying to make them go on. Not my shining moment. Two hours or rethinking our outfits later, bedtime.

2. Wednesday... Got up really early to get dressed and take family Christmas pictures in the cold air. Tears, snot, running toward traffic-- I'm a mess without my coffee-- and had to schedule a reshoot. Actually, baby boy was NOT a fan of that cold day.

Yay for one single good shot! Here's our Christmas card picture:

3. Drove to Houston. I have become quite the fan of long car rides. The boys sleep and I can sit still for a couple of hours and read. That never happens! I even watched a little Netflix on my phone and Jeremy and I got to chat along the way. It was like a date.... words I never thought I'd speak. 

4. My sister hosted Thanksgiving and we stayed in a hotel! That is THE way to go. After supper and visiting with the family, we went back to our room, got into our p. jammies and cozied up in the big bed with a little Food Network. I love hotels.

5. Thursday... We put on our Thanksgiving clothes and watched a bit of the parade before heading to Kristin's house. Throughout the day, we cooked and more family trickled in. I grabbed a hot potato with my bare hands and chunked it straight at my brother-in-law's mother, nearly killing her, so that was exciting. After a yum-yummy meal (thank you, Pioneer Woman menu plan), the girls all went out to see Breaking Dawn. I proudly admit that I'm 30 years old and loved the Twilight books. Not as much as Harry Potter. There, I said it.

These shirts were quick and easy-- I used faux suede for the ties and felt for the turkey faces, then fabric-glued everything right on the shirt. I saw the inspiration in a flash while browsing Pinterest, but don't remember where exactly.

6. Then we watched the last ever Texas A&M vs. UT Thanksgiving Day game. We're Aggies fans around here so it was a sad defeat for our team.

7. Friday was spent doing some Black Friday shopping, polishing off leftovers, visiting Santa at the Bass Pro Shop and driving home.

8. Laundry, laundry, laundry.

I love our tradition of spending the rest of Thanksgiving weekend, decking our halls. 

It's the hap-happiest season of all! 

Our first real tree (non artificial)

When it comes to decorating, Christmas is all about traditional reds and whites for me. I experimented with pom pom trim on the tree and love it so I need to go get some more.

Snow Village

I'm Thankful.

I am the world's worst at getting my boys' handprints. They're not in daycare (those teachers are so GOOD at documenting handprints, aren't they?) and I just never think to do it.

After seeing this on Pinterest, I recognize that I do need to be better about getting those precious fingers in ink every once in a while.

The truth is, thinking of my boys growing up makes me sad. I'm just not one of those mommies who can't wait until the next stage. I'm nostalgic. I cling to every stage and beg it to last forever. I guess that doing fingerprint crafts scares me a little. It's silly, I know, but I feel like one day I'll look back at these little turkey and tree paintings and I'm not so sure I'll swell with joy. I'm pretty sure I'll be reaching for a Kleenex.

So, why do them? Because, if the Lord blesses my little men with time and years, they will grow up. It's good. And if I don't have anything tangible around to remind me of when they needed Mommy's strong, sure hand in their much smaller one, I'll regret it.

Don't misunderstand, making the pillow together was a memory that I'll look back on fondly. We had fun and laughed together and talked about color and art. I praised my four-year-old for stifling his giggles when I painted his hand to keep it steady. I was shocked at how the one-year-old was able to slowly place his hand on the fabric without wiggling his fingers into a blurry mess.

Right now, I love looking at my pillow every day.

But ten years from now? We'll see how it goes.



Shared with: Tatertots and Jello

Molasses Cookies

My grandma made molasses cookies for me-- soft, not crunchy-- when I was a girl. They were my favorite and she knew it. I can smell her kitchen every time I bake a batch and I miss her.

Yesterday, my son helped me make them, pouring in each ingredient as I measured. I told him about his great-grandmother that he never knew. Her generous heart, serving attitude, and how she was the quintessential grandma like from story books and movies. When I stayed at her house, we would paint with her good watercolors and oil paints on real canvases. I now have her paintbrushes displayed in a vase in my home. Visiting Grandma meant I would get to eat supper in the living room on little trays with a flower in a bud vase and watch TV. She taught me how to play poker with matches as chips, and Chinese checkers, and tell me funny stories about growing up in rural New Mexico.

When my son and I put the first dozen in the oven, I opened up my old photo albums so he could see his Pop's mommy. But I couldn't find one. Not one. How have so many years passed since her death and I never realized I don't have a single photograph of my beloved grandmother? I think about her daily, wishing I could speak to her now, as a woman, a wife, a mother. If she could have only met my husband and my precious babies. I guess she's such a part of my life-- her wisdom, her example, her paintings and recipes-- that I haven't missed having a tangible photo. I see her every day.

And so we ate our cookies and laughed and I prayed that one day my boys will remember me like that.

Preheat oven to 375. Cream 3/4 c. shortening, 1 c. brown sugar, 1/4 c. molasses and 1 egg until fluffy. Sift together 2-1/4 c. flour, 2 t. baking soda, 1/2 t. salt, 1 t. ground ginger, 1 t. ground cinnamon, 1/4 t. cloves. Stir into the molasses mixture. Form in small balls and roll in sugar. Place 2" apart on greased cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes. 

Shared with: Tatertots and Jello

A Halloween Weekend

What a fun Halloween weekend we have had so far and it's not over yet. Having kids makes holidays like Halloween so much more awesome.

Yesterday, Jeremy and I took the boys to pass out little pumpkin magnets at the nursing home. Earlier in the week, I cut out a stack of pumpkins from orange paper and my oldest boy used a black marker to decorate them with jack-o-lantern faces. Then I laminated them and stuck a magnet to the back. It was a meaningful way to add a lesson on serving others to the regular candy-filled festivities, and I'm now on the hunt for more ways to add projects like that to our routine. My only regret is that I didn't get a single picture of him making the pumpkins or delivering them. Hate that.

After getting to visit with my sister and brother-in-law, my mom watched the baby while Jeremy and I took the big boy to our local Halloween festival. We played Plunko, ring toss, and a few other carnival games before heading home to fix a spooky supper for the grandparents. I loved every minute of yesterday! 

Somewhere in the middle of all of that my sister painted my nails with the cutest candy corns. I'm not usually very adventuresome with nails, but how fun is this? She did a great job.

And now that we're home from church and a delicious gumbo lunch at my mom and dad's, we're hopping in the car to visit my other sister and her family. We'll be spending the next few days with the cousins, trick-or-treating, and catching up. 

Sometimes I worry that these are the best days of our lives and they're slipping by so quickly.

So I'm holding on to every minute.

How to Eat a Crisp, Autumn Apple

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

A Year of DIYing

It's been a while since I'd written about our DIY projects and fixing up this old house we bought a year ago. Wow. It really is hard to believe twelve months have vaporized behind us-- a little longer, in fact.

But we've been doing a lot. Time slips by like that when you're excited about living your life. When I went back to dig up pictures of the house, I scrolled through the months of images saved on my computer and was stunned at how far we've come-- as a family first, and also on the work we've done on our home.

the boys at this time last year (right before moving)

• My boys turned 4 and 1 in this house.
• We hosted Christmas Eve for the first time here.
• We added a new dog to our family.

the boys about a month ago

• We met some new neighbors who have become friends.
• We learned how to lay tile, rewire lights, install faucets and molding, how to retexture ceilings and walls, and how to get help when we needed it.
• We developed a clearer style-- that's still evolving.

October of last year-- greener grass, but LOTS of overgrown landscaping that hid the house from the street

• Jeremy and I celebrated our 9th anniversary and started saving up for a trip to Italy for our 10th.
• We bought a new car.
• My baby took his first steps and said "Mama" right here in our living room.
• My four-year-old learned to ride a bike on this driveway and read his first book at the dining room table.

This year, Texas saw a terrible drought that took most of our grass with it. We did a lot of other yard work, though, removing about twenty giant palm trees that hid our house and harbored roaches.

The new front bed we put in this summer.

Jeremy and I enjoy the work we've devoted to making our formerly ugly house into a cozy, inviting home for our family. It's time we spend together and it's an investment into our future memories. The pride of accomplishment, of learning to mend an uncomfortable space into a family place, has been invaluable. I wouldn't trade it.

People always ask us, "Would you buy the house again, knowing all the work ahead of you?" Our answer is "Yes!" We have become better for it.

And we saved a fortune!