Life as we go it

Monday, January 12, 2015

Photos from Christmas 2014 - Round 1

It's been a while since I last wrote on here!

First I want to wish you all a belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year :) I hope that each of your hearts was filled with love and joy over the holidays. And for those whose hearts may have been aching (the loss of a loved one, or dealing with financial strain, etc) I hope that the New Year wraps you in a big fuzzy blanket of peace and grants you the new beginnings you need :)

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I intended on writing about some some pre-Christmas crafts that Liam and Chloe worked on, some photos of our indoor and outdoor Christmas decorations, some gifts that I made, etc....but I just didn't find the time because:

a) Taking care of two kids every day makes for some busy times! Nurturing them and loving them and teaching them, all the while trying to put up and decorate the Christmas tree/buy and wrap gifts for family/create photo calendars & Christmas cards/prepare food & bake sweets/clean the house for guests/etc just made it that much harder to find time to do anything extra, such as monkey around on my blog.

b) We were traveling around quite a bit prior to/during/after Christmas. It went something like this:

Matt's sister arrived from CA the week before Christmas and stayed with us for a couple of nights.

Then we hosted Matt's cousins at our house for our annual "Cousins Xmas". Then on the weekend (prior to Christmas) we traveled to Matt's parents' house for a couple of days and celebrated with his family. On Christmas Eve we visited Matt's parents again & then went to my mom's house, then back to our house later that night. Woke up Christmas morning with our kids at our house. Went to my aunt's house that afternoon/evening. Came back to our house. Went to my mom's house the next morning-Saturday. We got back home the Saturday after Christmas, only for Chloe to get sick that Sunday night.

and c) I've been feeling yuck-o for the last two weeks. It started with the flu a couple of weeks ago (I had uncontrollable chills and stabbing body pains for two days). Then it turned into a lingering fever and cold. Then the cough set in. And that's where I'm at now. I have an annoying won't-go-away cough & zero energy. It also hit up Chloe, Liam and Matt, but in different ways.

I think we're finally digging ourselves out of the sick cave & heading towards normal again. Thus why I am finally sitting down to view photos I took from Christmas and blog about it!

I took ~~way too many~~ a ton of photos, so I'll share these with you first, then share some more in a few days. Enjoy :)

Sweet little Chloe's first Christmas!

I love Liam with his shirt off! And Chloe's face was in "I'm going to start crying
in 1/2 of a second" mode...

Liam was a PRO at helping decorate the tree this year!

And Chloe loved watching her brother do the work.

I love getting Christmas cards in the mail.

You can never have too many holiday-themed books laying around for the kiddos...

Here are the cutout cookies that Liam and I made together.

Christmas is not complete in our house without a jar of pickled eggs (made by Matt).

Liam's elf named "Magic Man"

The footprint print that Liam made last year.

Gifts, wrapped and ready

We hosted a lumberjack-themed Cousins' Christmas party.

Flannel, flannel everywhere...

To be continued....

Monday, December 15, 2014

'Tis the season

A few things that have made me smile lately...

Thanksgiving dinner at my mom's house.

Liam and his cousin Rylan.

Yes, this is three kids playing on three iPads.

The kids looovvveeee grandma's house :)

A sweet little message my niece Caroline wrote on the

chalkboard in my mom's kitchen.

Liam's first snowman of 2014.

Chloe has turned out to be a GREAT little gift wrapping helper.

Shaking the ribbon all over. Picking out gift tags for me.

My nephew's Christmas band concert at Blue Harbor.

Liam painting. I know, he does it all of the time. But it still makes me

smile, seeing him experiment with the colors & brushes. My little artist.

This sign I found at Hob Lob. I had to get it for the kitchen.

The tree is decorated, thanks to another great helper in the family named Liam.

The crazy dining room, filled with exciting Christmas To-Do things.

Wrapping gifts and making ornaments and decorating. Fun chaos.

Our cat Marlee being "fine" with Chloe chasing her around, tugging on her tail,

pulling her fur. What a good cat she is.

Testing out the (vintage) mixer we got from Matt's grandma :)

It's first hoorah -- Christmas cookie dough.

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

What lies beneath

In an attempt to make more room for our Christmas tree in the living room I had Matt move the couch a bit. This is what I found underneath it:

Can you tell we have kids?

Clearly we do not look under our couch very often. Based on the fact that I found a Valentine's Day heart decoration -- that means it's been at least since February that we've last looked underneath.

And do you see anything non-kid related?

There's not even a cat toy. Or one of my hair ties. Or one of Matt's stale Tostitos. The only even slightly-adult thing is two dimes. Twenty cents. Not even enough $ for a large gum ball.

Some other observations I made:

- We obviously don't play cards often -- otherwise I think we would have noticed the missing card by now...

- And it's been even longer since we've played 'Drinking Jenga.' Like a wayyyyy long time ago. I guarantee that the Jenga block was being used by Liam to build a castle or spaceship. Definitely not by Matt & I to purposely get wasted.

- Can you say major choking hazards?? It's a good thing we looked under here before Chloe crammed her tiny little arms under there and started swiping stuff out.

- Lastly, I'm surprised by the lack of crusty food and/or centipedes and/or other gross things usually found under couches. Although I'm sure I'll run into some of those when I look underneath the couch cushions ~~tomorrow~~ one of these months.