Rewind

Whew! These last days have just flown by. It may take me a few posts to get caught up so stay with me.

The first thing I must write about is, on the 19Th, our baby turning 6. Seriously, where does the time go? Rob got off work early and we took her to build a bear. She has had her eye on this bear for a long time. Her friend Hailey has one and named it Lovie and all Emily talks about it Lovie this and Lovie that. We knew she would be thrilled to have a Lovie of her own. If you've never done a build a bear before they sew it up they have you pick out a heart and make a wish then sew it inside the bear. Precious I know. So she had Emily grab one, then had her grab two more and Rob and I had to make a wish and when we were done we had to say Happy Birthday Emily! as loud as we could. It ended up being a little louder than I thought. And the store was packed so that was fun.

Washing her up

Doing her birth certificate

Waiting in line to pay. Yeah, that set us back a weeks worth of groceries. But she's so darn cute. We just couldn't resist.

That night our families came over to celebrate. We had dinner and immediately opened presents because she could hardly stand it. She just had to wear her crown that she made at school. I think it looked like a dunce cap but don't tell her I said that :o)

Rich and Steph got her this crown. Much better!

Unless, of course, you put it on crooked and don't fix your hair. Adorable. Do you like her My Little Pony on the cake. That was a touch all her own.

I also have some exciting news. Rich and Steph announced they are pregnant. Well, Steph is pregnant, Rich is just along for the ride. She is due in August. August 10Th to be exact, which is Taylor's birthday, but she will have a c-section before then. I am sooooo excited. I just love having babies that I can snuggle and cuddle and adore and send home so I can get a full nights sleep. Can I get an amen?! Been there, done that, not planning on doing it again unless God wants to show what a sense of humor he has. I hope he doesn't. You wouldn't see me laughing.

Gingerbread and $5 shopping

We have been having fun with our advent activities this week. Monday we did gingerbread 'houses'. We have always bought a boxed house in the past but I decided it's such a waste to put together a house that is so hard we can't eat it. Every year they get thrown away whole so this year I decided I would make gingerbread in the shape of little houses and we could all decorate one. It worked out great. I broke out the candy and sprinkles and a-decorating we went.

Emily spent a lot of time licking the frosting and piling on candy.

So did Taylor.

Austin's one wish was that his would stand up. It would for a few seconds at a time so he was happy.
Our finished products. Emily and Taylor's have so much candy on them. So much. Mine didn't so that's why it is almost gone. ;O)



Tuesday we had one of the funnest nights yet. $5 shopping night. We each drew the name of another family member and were given $5. We headed to Walmart and had 30 minutes to buy something for that person. I took Emily with me and Rob took the boys. We kept our bags a secret til we got home then we had to say who we had and give them their gift.

I had Rob and I got him some coffee, chapstick, skittles and gum.

Rob had Taylor and he got him a Broncos notebook, nerds and three matchbox cars.

Austin had Emily. I love this picture because she was so happy.

She got a littlest pet shop turtle. She loves littlest pet shop.

Emily had Austin and she got him a hot chocolate set, gum and mechanical pencils, which he loves.

Taylor had me and I got Junior mints, scrapbook tags and vellum sayings.

Only 8 more days...

Yipeee it's snowing...again

Can you feel the sarcasm? I am not a fan of the snow. Nope. I don't like it. It's cold, it's wet and it makes driving anywhere suck. So you can imagine how thrilled I am that for the third day in a row it's coming down. I should be happy it's only a small amount. Poor Matt is in a blizzard right now. But I'm not. I'm a hot blooded human. I need heat. You see, I've always been a lover of warm weather but it really hit me when we went to Mexico. I always knew of places that were warm when we weren't but to actually go to a place with 90 degree weather in October made me happy, then when we had to come home to considerably colder weather I was not pleased. And that did it. I want to be someplace where they know no snow. Where I can lay on the beach 365 days a year if I so choose. Someplace warm. Does this say happiness to you? A high of 12(that's not even two syllables) screams unhappiness to me.

We had a great weekend. Friday was our night to go downtown and see the capital Christmas tree. Emily went to Kiki's to spend the night so she wasn't with us but we brought our neighbor, Matt, to make up for it. We got down there and, because they are doing construction on the capital, they had decorated a tree that stands on the property and we really could've gone any day of the year and just imagined lights on it. It was also sleeting so we got out, looked at it, the boys ran round for a very few minutes and we made our way back to the car. It was freezing out so we went to Starbucks for some hot drinks then to Toys R Us.

Our church Christmas program was last weekend so most of my day Saturday was spent there. I had so much fun being a part of it. We sang some great songs. My absolute favorite was the Christmas Worship Medley. It's long but if you have the time take a listen. It's fabulous. Glory to God was pretty fun too. The band played Christmas Eve Sarajevo by Trans Siberian Orchestra and it was amazing. They did such an awesome job. The whole thing turned out so well. God definitely had his hand in it.

This morning I had a doctor appointment. They were checking my cholesterol again. I knew they were doing a finger prick and I have been so nervous about it. The last time I had my finger pricked was in 6th grade. My best friends mom worked at the Red Cross and she was coming to school to tell us what our blood types were as part of a science unit we were doing. I was feeling good. Cami and I were going to go first but I chickened out. I sat there and watched my whole class get their fingers stuck and all to soon I was the only one left to do it. She stuck me and I went back to my chair. Someone siting next to me said "you are so white". My teacher came up to me and confirmed my ghost like appearance then Cami's mom said I should go lie down in the hall. How embarrassing! And so began my involuntary reaction to all things needle. Fast forward to today and all the way there I was wishing they would take blood out of my arm, because for some reason I don't have a problem with that. Go figure. So I get there, she calls me back and I tell her I would rather have it taken from my arm and she just laughs. She alcohols my finger and I am squeezing my eyes shut and telling myself not to pull my finger away when she pokes me and then...nothing. No pain. No bee sting, no sliver, nada. Thank you Lord. I felt rather silly for being so nervous but when you have my history you can never be too careful. And the best news is my cholesterol is normal again.

Now if only the snow would stop.

The last few days

**A trip to Sonic for dinner. All five of us eating in the car. Not as bad as I thought. And Em only spilled a little of her blue coconut slush(or 'slushly' as she says it).

**Watched Polar Express and drank homemade hot chocolate. Each of the boys had a partner to cuddle up with.

**Trying my hand at homemade marshmallows. I forgot to put the vanilla in but after I rolled them in peppermint they tasted yummy. I bagged some up for the kid's teachers.

**Figured out why our peppermint milkshakes tasted weird. Instead of peppermint ice cream I bought vanilla ice cream and candy canes to put in. I crushed up one of the leftover candy canes today for my marshmallows, grabbed a small piece of it and popped it in my mouth. Yep...it wasn't peppermint. It was either cinnamon or cherry. The piece was too small to tell but it definitely was not peppermint. Next time I'll make it easier on me and buy peppermint ice cream. Geez.

Stepping Up

I just got back from our last Bible study session and can I just say how great our God is. We studied the Psalms of ascent which are Psalm 120-134. In the last six weeks the lord has shown me that he is my Protector, my Help and so much more. What a blessing to gather with women every week and be able to share their heartbreaks and their joys, their struggles and fears and know that through it all God is there and he loves us. And what a blessing to once again be a part of a Beth Moore study. She is awesome!

A few of my favorite things

We got our tree this weekend. What was supposed to be a fun trip to the mountains to cut down our tree turned into a fun trip to a local tree farm turned into getting our tree from the church lot. We thought it would be fun to cut down our own but it was getting late in the season and we were running out of weekends so a local tree lot was our best bet. Rich and Steph went to check it our before we got there and when she called i heard the words "do not go there". She said all the good trees get cut down the day after thanksgiving so the leftovers were only 3-5 feet tall. We need one slightly bigger than that so we headed to church and grabbed a beautiful 8 foot tree.


One of my favorite things to do is decorate the tree because there are so many memories connected to our ornaments. These are some of my favorites.




I love this ornament because it is a reminder of how blessed we were to have a little girl in our family this year. Emily was 6 days old on her first Christmas.






















My mom bought Em this ornament when she was two years old. The story behind it goes like this...the kids had spent the night at my parents and Austin had a soccer game the next morning. When Rob and I got to the game my mom and Emily were kicking the ball back and forth. The next thing I see is the ball flying at Emily's face, it hit her so hard that it literally picked her up off the ground and she landed flat on her back. My mom felt terrible but when she saw this ornament she knew she had to get it for her.



I love these homemade ornaments too. Our tree is covered with them. Austin made the reindeer when he was in preschool,the tree in kindergarten and Taylor made the angel when he was four.

Rob made this star in elementary school. When we got married 99% of our ornaments were ones he was given during his childhood or ones he made growing up. We have since added many others but they still have a special place on our tree.




















I pick up ornaments when we travel. The boat is from Martha's vineyard when we went on our missions trip , the star is from Cabo and the ears are from our trip to Disneyland. It is amazing how all of the memories from our trips come flooding back when I see these.














These ornaments hold a special place in my heart. When Rob and I got married and I had Austin Rob was off playing basketball every other weekend(Thurs-Sun) so it was just me and a baby. The nights got long so to pass the time Terry got me these ornament kits to make. I would put Austin to bed and would sit for hours in front of the TV making them. We have a gingerbread man, woman and house, three different sizes of Santa and the stuffed Santas. I don't know how many of these I ended up making that year but it was a lot, and how they made the evenings go by.












I love my house decorations. We don't have a lot of them because I have gotten rid of many that didn't mean much to me so I could slowly acquire ones that I really like.


I got these candy canes for 49 cents each at Real Deals and they are quickly becoming one of my favorite things.
All of our stockings were made by my mother in law. I love them and would take them over store bought stockings any day.
I totally stole this idea from Erin because I love it. I had an old window and didn't know what to do with it so I ended up putting it on the shelf in the bathroom and used my old stocking, that was knitted by my great aunt when I was a baby.







And finally we have our tree. When we got the ornaments on it started looking a little lopsided but that's OK. It's our and we love it.


















This weekend we also managed to squeeze in a trip to the Botanical Gardens for Winter Garden aGlow with all the Smiths. If you haven't been it is something that you should do at least once. Everything that is sitting still is covered with lights. Everything.

This is only a small section of the gardens.



































Saturday we had our annual Reed family shopping day. Unfortunately Grandma Reed was sick so she couldn't make it but we did have Tina, Stacia, Laura, Stephanie, Terry, Steph and me. We started like we do every year at Cracker Barrel then went to several more stores together. I found Em a bed in a bag at Bed Bath and Beyond that was marked down from $179.99 to $99 because it was 'dirty', although I didn't see anything wrong with it and then they let me use a 20% coupon on it too so I got the whole thing for $80. So happy! It was not something I planned on buying but I was glad I found it.

To end the weekend we had our church Christmas party. Last year was the first year Rob and I went and we had a blast. This year was no different. We had a great table and a lot of laughs. Last year we won the table trivia game and this year we tied with three other tables. We'll see if we can go for a three-peat next year :o) So that is what is going on with us lately. Busy but trying to enjoy the season. To add to all that is going on I am also trying to do a December daily album. It's coming along slowly. Very slowly. But my hope is it will be done before 2008 is over.

Cool find

I love music. I turn it on almost daily and it plays, many times, until dinner time. Well I was told about a fabulous website called Pandora and it is awesome. All you do is type in a song or artist that you like and it will continuously play similar artists and songs commercial free. And the best part is it's free! So if you are like me and music is a must have in your everyday life then get to Pandora and enjoy.

Days 2 and 3

Our advent activities are going well. Day two was 'make and decorate sugar cookies'. When I really thought about it I knew that making and decorating them would take all night so I made them in the afternoon so they would be ready for decorating that evening. The kids loved it and I think more frosting and sprinkles were eaten than actually made it on the cookies but they had fun. Emily went non traditional and used her pink and purple Barbie sprinkles on her cookies, while the boys smothered theirs in red and green.

Day three's idea I stole and we made paper snowflakes. I have ideas planned for the month but nothing that would've been done before we had to go to church. I printed off templates of some really cool flakes and the kids did their own thing. In the end we had the good, the bad and the ugly. I read that if you iron them with a cool iron they will flatten out so I plan on doing that today so we can hang them tonight.

This evening we are going to make homemade peppermint milkshakes. Yum!

Finally

It's done! I finally finished my advent calendar and I LoVe it! It's rather large, about five feet, but I wanted it tall enough for big pockets. Taylor got to pick out the first card and thought it was so cool. We do it before school so they have something to look forward to all day. Today's said "watch Elf and eat popcorn" so that's what we did. I made taco soup for dinner then we all plopped on the couch, popcorn bowls in hand, and watched the entire movie together. Such a fun evening together and I am looking forward to many more this month.