Beauty in Bloom

My New Year's baby is two.

Oct. 2011 taken by Breathtaking Photography

It's 10:00 pm on New Years Eve.

The house stinks to high heaven.

We are playing Rockband.

It is my sweet baby's birthday. Olivia Jane turned 2 today! Instead of celebrating her birthday or celebrating New Year's with friends, I have been cleaning up her vomit and diarrhea all day. It has been kind of a bummer, but we are spending our first New Year's at home as a family. Which is something we have never done. We are always away from home. Two years ago tonight, I was laying in a hospital bed all alone after giving birth to my sweet girl.

4 days old

Daddy had taken the other two home and the nurse's were taking care of my 3 hour old newborn.

I rested.

Good thing too. Because this chick keeps me running.

Olivia Jane, my dear, you are the light of our lives.

Your sisters simply adore you.

You are so sassy.

You are so sweet too.

You say NO to everything, even if you mean YES.

You hardly listen to me. Maybe it's the age.

I think it's just because you are stubborn.

I am your favorite person.

Baby dolls are your favorite toys.

Macaroni and cheese is your favorite food.

Some of your nicknames are Livy, Livy Lou, Livy Jane, shorty, and Lou Lou.

Just to name a few.

Happy 2nd Birthday to our sweet girl.

We love you so much and can't imagine a life without you!

Sassy in her heels

A little Artist....Nov. 2011

Christmas morning. Playing with a box of course.

Poor girl spent her birthday very sick.

Thankfully I didn't plan to have her party today. I think I will wait a week or two.

  

While I was picking up the older two girls from a sleepover at Grandma's, Bob took Olivia outside for a bit to swing. It was 60 degrees here on New Year's Eve and she was feeling ok that moment so he thought it might cheer her up. I had just left so he was also distracting her too. She will not leave my side for anything right now.

Secretly, I don't mind.

******For the life of me I can not get any photos to load! I will try again tomorrow and edit this post with some photos of Olivia.  Turns out my computer is too new for Typepad's website. Had something to do with Internet Explorer.

I have a computer again. My awesome husband just decided to buy me a new one. We got an amazing deal. It has only been a few days since I have been able to join the online world again.

Happiness.

I am dying to share our Christmas photos, but we have been so busy this week spending time together as a family since Bob has been off work. I wish you could hear him singing "Eye of the Tiger" on Rockband. I am typing this and the girls gave up trying to play a long time ago, so he is just singing by himself.

Pure awesomeness.

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas

 {Our Christmas Card}

Merry Christmas everyone!

*******************

I hope to have a decent computer soon. So much stuff to share.

Today we are headed to my Grandpa's to celebrate with my Mom's side of the family.

It always crazy, but fun.

I get to see my baby brother Joshua.

So excited about that.

He is not a baby, he is actually almost 30.

Tomorrow we get to go to church on Christmas morning.

How special.

Then it will be off to my Dad's for more celebrating.

And food.

Ugh.

Food.

Why must you be so hard to resist?

Anyway, the kids are bursting with excitment.

It almost doesn't get better than kids and Christmas spirit.

We have been tracking Santa all day.

About every 10 minutes Faith asks me where he is.

Of course, he is never anywhere that she has heard of.

I am so blessed and so very thankful to God for my sweet family and our life we share together.

I can't say it enough.

 

 

***this is my 200th post

How do people do it?

I have been with out my computer since Sunday.

I am dying.

How do people do it?

Kind of embarrassed that I have become so reliant on it.

My husband spilled water all over it.

It's pretty much toast.

I miss reading blogs.

I miss Pinterest.

I am on my daughter's ancient computer right now.

Thank goodness my photos were backed up a week before it died.

That would have sucked....to lose over 10,000 photos.

It has given me more time to do things like this:

I am making the girls their very own Black Apple dolls for Christmas.

Google it if you don't know what that is. I can not figure out how to open a new window on this computer to get you a link.

I am hoping to get a new computer soon.

For now, I am going to try and blog on Faith's computer.

If I feel like it.

It's sorta kinda annoying trying to use it.

If this sounded dramatic, it was meant to.

Just so you know, my sweet husband feels awful.

The end.

Bell ringing babies

This was the scene outside of the Alton Schnucks on Monday night.

30 degrees.

One bundled up family.

Lots of bells and Christmas cheer.

Baby it was cold outside.

Once again, the photo were taken with my cell phone.

I have two nice cameras.

I forget them often.

 

ps...We are a part of a local missional church plant. This was an activity that our family participated in to help our community. The girls were such troopers out in the cold. No complaining. Just lots of bell ringing and Merry Christmases to the generous folks dropping money into the pot.

Here is a short video of my baby Liv....

  

The tree and it's skirt.

This year I wanted a colorful tree, so naturally when I saw this tree skirt from Land of Nod I thought....I can soooo make this. Now let me stress something here, JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN MAKE SOMETHING IT DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD. I love the way it turned out, but I hate working with fabric glue.

Here is Land of Nod's version:

Here is my attempt at making my own version:

To make this I bought some linen-blend fabric and sewed the base of the tree skirt. That was the easy part. I just used my old tree skirt as a template. Next, I cut out around 100 circles in different sizes. I ended up only using about half or so because glueing them on became so tedious. Not to mention, they had to be place in a circle to line up with the ric-rac.

The ric-rac.

If I never see another piece of that stuff again, I will be ok. It took a while to glue on. I probably should have sewed it on but I think it would have been more difficult to get it into a perfect circle. Anywho, it's done.

 I love it.

 BUT, again I need to remember, just because I can make something does not mean I should. I did save about $50 bucks though.

It's the most wonderful time of the year.

 

*******

Elf update:

Here is how we found Ethan yesterday morning.

I love it.

Some other things I love today....

Listening to Elvis Presley's White Christmas CD

Caramel latte's from Panera Bread

A trip to Michael's for snow globe supplies

Making snow globes out of mason jars with the kiddos

Christmas shopping online

My husband.

 

What is making you happy right now?

 

linking up:

 

 

Advent calendar

So, I made this advent calendar last year.

I really love it.

I found it here.

Last year, I didn't blog about it.

Last year, I didn't blog about Christmas anything. Period.

I must have been in a funk. Who knows.

I am rambling.

Here is how I displayed it last year....

.....on a Christmas card stand that I found at a yard sale for $1.00. It is cute that way, but the stand is wobbly and I really don't have anywhere to put it.

Here is how I am displaying it this year....

Some activities we have enjoyed so far:

Writing letters to Santa

A new pair of Christmas socks for each girl

Driving around to see the lights

Read a NEW Christmas book

Donuts for breakfast

I love doing this for the girls. It's fun for me. Maybe because we didn't really have traditions growing up.

 Maybe I just love Christmas.

I play it up around here. I mean last year Santa left his glove here for goodness sake. This year we adopted an Elf. 

My friends tell me that my kids are going to be dissapointed when they get older and find out the truth. It kind of upsets me. My husband tells me not to listen to what people say. It's hard for me to do that.

We stress the truth of the real meaning of Christmas with our children too. In fact, we make that a bigger deal. My kids love Jesus and know that it his truly his birthday. But, kids are kids. They love Santa. My husband grew up knowing the truth about Santa. He didn't like it very much, but that was all he knew. He never complains, but he really loves making it magical for the girls. I suppose it could have gone either way.

 ********

Tonight we are bell ringing for the Salvation Army at Big Lots. I am not sure how its going to go. It is 32 degrees here. We have a 2 year old.

It should be interesting.

little rascal.

Happy December.

It came so fast. Right? I feel like we just celebrated Halloween.

We are in the thick of Christmas activities, christmas movies, advent calendars, decorating the house and of course we adopted an Elf on the Shelf this year. We named him Ethan remember? Anyway, that little guy is sneaky. Last night, while we were sleeping he was up to no good.

That little rascal drew moustaches on all the photos!

Looks like he grew one himself.

The girls thought this was hilarious. They have been wondering all day if he is going to shave off his moustache.

I wonder what he will do next?

We will have to see.