MERRY CHRISTMAS !!!

May you feel the love , peace and joy as gifts from the birth of God's son this holiday season.

there's only 2 more days!!

Brigham exclaimed as he added the ornament on the advent calendar!!

I think a certain little someone is getting really excited!!

Seriously, I can't believe how much fun its been this year. I always have LOVED the Christmas season.. but with a little boy full of wonder, really starting to realize all the magic of the season.it is just a BLast!!

And by that I mean, yes, he is talking about the fat man in the red suit.. . He has simple requests, like the only thing he wants Santa to bring him is a candy cane. Easy for us =) And he is carrying around a little notepad, on which he scribbles 'notes to Santa'.

But, he is also talking about the baby Jesus , and how he is God's son. And how much he loves us. And when he puts his pajamas over his head... and says
"look Mom , I'm Mary."

so incredibly sweet.

We've been preparing in lots of ways.... getting a Christmas time haircut... such a handsome lil dude!

His program at school:where he was quite the little entertainer as he "whooshed" us a merry Christmas!

And we made goodies to take to all our neighbors and some friends of ours:

and with the results of our first winter storm last weekend and the help of one Daddy.. Brigham was so proud of his first snowman.. apropriately named 'FROSTY' lol.

(we soon had 40-50 degrees, so we had a little window watcher as he sadly saw the potato-buttons fall off, and the apple-eyes slide out...) we reminded him, that when its cold and there is more snow, he'll be back again some day!! OH!!!

and I did an adorable little photo shoot the other day with the kids for the last page of my calendar.

( put one together as a gift for all the great grandparents)

They were SOOOO cute, so as soon, as they are edited , I'll share.

Hope you are all enjoying these last few days.. and that you'll stop to reflect on the TRUE reason for this glorious season.

so a little bit of

helping others...Funny that I just read my 'mom's inspiration on my blog and it said to bring your kids to church to help out.

well, thats just what we did last week. Took both kids in to help (actually they cried, and played and caused mahem..) but help, they did... with sorting gifts and bagging for CHRISTMAS for EVERYONE!!


and on Christmas Eve day, we will continue the tradition of bell ringing...


Not sure , if Brigham will stay in a stoller this year.....


and yes, mom and dad were with him.. see my pregant with Tatum legs in the background!!! lol


hopefully it will not be terribly cold, but it was a tradition I grew up with , and wanted to continue with my own family.

we will leave Tatum with Grandma.



and on Christmas day, Andrew and I will head to the resource center to help give rides, or pass out meals, or whatever. another little tradition we wanted to do to give back and show our kids that not everybody gets a million presents, and has 6 coats, and lots of shoes, and plenty of food...especially cookies(thats what we're in to right now!! LOL)




and so some baking has been done..and lots of cookie eating =p.




four cookie exchanges last week and two brunches.




making goodies for neigbors to be delivered tomorrow. and cookies for Brig's program at school. I so wish my 3 year old was a bit better at 'helping' with this task....we're getting there with lots of practice!




and a bit of crafting has been done:here is the stable scene for Brigham's nativity at preschool.



The kids have been working hard on all the figures, and we get to see it all put together tomorrow at his class program.



we keep catching him singing his songs... its SOOO cute. I think a tad more effort is going into this program than the thanksgiving one.

I've got my camera all charged and waiting to capture that notarias.. "HI MOMMY!!!" on video!! LOL

and some crafting has been done: saw it on Ali Edwards blog. so adorable. and yet, I thought I had enough pins and buttons.. holy cow!! I blew right through 150 pins and will have to go get another bag of buttons.


was really liking the all green one seen here too for our master bedroom. oh, maybe next year!


and I made this fun wall hanging out of my december kit from Scrapbook Obsessions. actually made one for a friend too. I just love these papers and can't wait to scrap this year's pictures with them.



* and I've been relaxing on my couch as I look at this:
I have not neglegted my kids with all the business.!! we went to see Santa Thursday night, and got some really cute pictures. I'll share them once I edit them some. And Friday we had some good friends over for a festive holiday dinner...on my new holiday..ok..well winterware..LOVE them.
Saturday my mom watched Brigham all day and we did some Santa Clause shopping. A winter storm came in , and dumped 11 inches on us!!
Brig was snowed in at grandma's until about 8pm last night.. and we were snowed in at our house!! church was cancelled.
I spent the day organizing my pictures and watching holiday movies on the Hallmark channel. Andrew even watched the sappy movies with me, in between FF scores!!

well, Gotta go get something done while both kids are asleep! I hope you are all having a GREAT MONDAY!!!

a bit of a numbers post

*3 stitches taken out on Tuesday, from the spot on my back

* 1 call from the dr. saying its benign

*6 viles of blood taken for thyroid lab tests... (I am someone who NEVER goes to the doctor, and is hardly ever sick...and in the last month, we have been at least once a week!!! )

tired of writing co pay checks ....urghhhhh!!

*23 times we have been in public restrooms as we are out shopping, just to TRY and go potty!

* 1 pretty cute Mr. Bubble Clause

*5 hours of kidless entertainment.. dinner, dancing, adult drinks, and getting all fancy shmancy for the State Farm Christmas party(you can't see my cute flowy tiered black pants) they were fun

oh, my red eye are result of my lack of taking the time to edit my photos.. not the drinks =p

*647 holiday catalogs that have come in the mail this week.

(who budgets for the marketing depts of these companies anway... I can still tell that its the same stuff, even with a different cover !)

*42 Christmas cards mailed out... BEFORE the week before Christmas.. I am so impressed with myself !

*2 inches of snow that fell this week, pretty to look at- not enough to play in.

almost! ( a three year old can still find dirty snow-ice in the parking lot of Wal Mart !! LOL)

* 1 super happy baby girl who has found her voice, and 'sings' at the top of her lungs !

* 1 super frustrated perfectionest mommy as she controlled herself as we made our Candy Cottage

*5 hours until we host our holiday party, so I should probably start cooking and cleaning and stop blogging =)

Hope you are all having a fun filled and festive weekend !!

RECAP THRU PICTURES!

ok, so I just went to download some pics of the camera, and well, there is a whole bunch of 'what we've been up to"...

I always feel like we do something fun, or something funny happens, or I just want to speak my mind(usually not funny LOL) or the kids do something cute, or my husband does something out of the ordinary, or I do something spacey(like everyday!! LOL).....and I always think to myself..

"this would be such a perfect thing to blog about"... and well, life happens, and we just keep going, and then I never blog.


I am a slacker like that. Or do they call it procrastination???


so, I thought I'd give a peek into our whirlwind of the last few weeks.






Hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving holiday, and that you spent some good time with family and/or friends. oh, yeah, and that you had fabulous food =)
















Brigham's Thanksgiving feast/program at school the week before Turkeyday.(well, not so much of a program, as it was they stood on their mats, and wiggled and waved at the parents, and TRIED to sing a couple of songs. Some of the kids even included the hand motions.


Mine finally figured it out during the last verse of the second song!!LOL

and we crafted a turkey cupcake!!

Brigham samples his masterpiece. They were actually quiet good!!

and we took home a pilgrim ... he took this with us to my grandma's and tried to describe what /who he was!!

We stuffed ourselves with Grandma's down home farm cooking on Thanksgiving Day.

Tatum and Brig were the life of the party.

My grandma just adores them both, and at 87 years old, still gets down on the floor to play with them.!!

We actaully took a video that we got at the library. SCHOOL HOUSE ROCK---

does anyone remember that? took us down memory lane for sure. My cousins are still in highschool so not to far off for them, but we got quite the chuckles as we looked back at this show.

Brigham of course LOVED it, and is now repeating... junction, junction, whats your function all the time!!

Here is a picture of my sweet brother and Tatum. He has been away in Pheonix for the last 3 years, so it was fun to have him here, even if he did sleep most of the day!!

We made these cute little turkeys.

Love the concentration and the tongue out!!

oh, yeah, and Tatum tried oatmeal for the first time a couple weeks ago....

not a fan at first..

and then she decided it was ok (either that, or she just knows how to work the camera!! LOL)

hope you're having a GREAT week =)

this is how you do it....

step 1:lift the lid very carefully, so you don't make a loud noise(same for shutting the lid)

step 2: wait for a big stream to come out and then see if the water turns '"lello".

step 3: wash hands and make a big mess!!

(notice the blue shorts in the water.. those are from the mess from number two, which we don't quite have down =(

WHOO HOOOOOOO! this is the phrase which he shouts out with great satisfaction!!

we are waking up with dry pullups for about two weeks now!!

its a fun time around our house!

I pulled it off !

tribute to this man and the welcoming him into the thirtysomething club-

We went to dinner with our awesome friends Greg and Kelli. Went to this fabulously nice restaurant in our town(we only have 2 or 3!).It was one of those nice, leisurally dinners, that took about 2 hours of great conversation, lots of laughs, good drinks, good food , good company.

We were celebrating Andrew' s big 30th birthday!!

Little did he know that more fun was yet to come.... we decided to go for drinks at this Irish Pub. I so knew it would NOT be hard to get him to go. and so when we arrived at the bar,

SUPRISE!!!

I had reserved a cozy corner and 20-25 of his friends were waiting there to congratute the old man!

I can't believe I pulled it off.. Andrew said he had thought I might do something b/c he threw me a big suprise party for my 31st(yeah, I was a year late...totally suprised me!!LOL).

Then when I asked him a couple weeks before about a quiet dinner with our closest friends at the Hour Time, he figured, I hadn't done anything... but was ok with it.

So, he totally didn't have a clue!!

I made him this cake too. I baked it Thursday night at my moms(after a mom's night out) so he didn't know about it.. then went back over to my mom's on Friday day to decorate it!

I so thought that a 3 year old jabbermouth was going to spill the beans.. but he never mentioned it!!

Andrew is a HUGE broncho fan.. so that was the theme for the night...although I asked my dad to bring orange,blue, and white balloons ahead of time to the bar.. and well, he brought yellow, blue and white...so we pretended they were for the Denver Nuggets(basketball)!!LOL

anyway, it was a great time and we started out the evening with our friends, and we finished it off around 2 am with a late night snack at Qdobas.

Funny how after a night of drinking, you're always hungry for a meal.. yet at home, you'd never wake up in the middle of the night to eat like that!!

...luckily we got to sleep in, because my mom had the kids. and thank goodness the smoking band was in effect, because we didn't wake up with the stinch of stale cigarettes in our hair!! YUCK!!!. and to think we both smoked during our college and pre Brigham days...

so yes, Tatum had her first night away from us!! I am not one of those moms that worries, because, she stayed at my moms, and I am pretty sure my mom knows how to handle a baby. and if not, big brother was there to help out!! LOl

Mom, said she woke once in the middle of the night, drank a bit from the bottle and went right back to sleep. Basically she slept from 8 pm to 7 am!!

sure wish she would do that for us!! we've been digressing in the sleeping thru the night department.. UGH!!

but the potty training is coming along great.. no more diapers..just pullups, and no accidents except for #2..

I've got more pics from the party to edit, and we also had our family photo shoot on Saturday.

we got a few shots in for Tatums 6 month shoot, but then she got really tired, so we're trying again in a couple days.

Hope you all had a great weekend!!!

the lion and the lamb

finally getting my halloween pics up. ughh. I have 3 different photo editing software programs.. and they all take FOR-EVER to do.

I usually just wait and edit my pics thru Walgreen's .com before I order them online.

works for me.

I have been trying to organizing my pics little by little as well.... will it ever end???

scrapped a little in the last week.

we had a great time with our friends on Sat night...smores and hot dogs and a bonfire.. and of course some drinks.. (a few of us had a few too many!!). we had so much fun just hanging out, maybe we'll get one more nice night before it gets too cold, to do it again. we'll bring the FUN drinks this time =)

Sunday we had our sunday school lesson on Families of Faith. very cool class. and fabulous book study. We were supposed to go to Morman church (but that would have been 4 hours of church for us!!! =/)

so we decided to stay for our worship service. so glad we did. it was a great sermon.

Sunday afternoon we went to some friends house to watch the BIG game.

Colts vs. Patriots.

We had our token cheerleader dressed in blue!! (though none of us were actually that big of Colts fans.. but since we live in In... we have to try)

Cleaning the house today. baking a chocolate molten cake for dessert. I am hosting my girls group tonight. Hopefully it turns out. I was wanting something more fall-ish, but nothing was sounding that great. so chocolate it is!

hope you're all having a great weeK!

a purdue homecoming & a rainy trick or treat

We went trick or treating for the third year in our little downtown . Very fun. a tad wet, although we never really got wet, due to the building coverage. The quaint streets were tainted with ghosts, and goblins and even Spiderman was going from storefront to storefront to collect candy. Brigham had so much fun, and Tatum(dressed in her costume) slept in the stroller the entire time!! So here is a peek. I just love this photo I captured of Andrew and Brigham. We're all set for some big time trick or treating tomorrow night!!

Here is a replica of the 'moon prints' leading up to the new Neil Armstrong Engineering building. The dedication was Friday night, and we got to go inside and check it out. Complete w/ moon rocks, and a capsule hung from the ceiling. Its a very cool bldg design as well, but I didn't get a pic of it!!

Brigham after the game, intensley watching the band as it marches by. He has informed us that he wants to be in the band. He was playing his 'air trombone' and having a blast. We never even told him how to, he just saw it and mimiked it. gotta love it.

(though Andrew is trying to sway him into playing football instead of the band...)

Here is the statue of the boyish Neil Armstrong as he looked during his Freshman year of campus.

the band getting it on to 'SHOUT'

put your hands up and 'shout'... Brigham never missed a beat!!

Boiler UP!!

proudly showing off his Purdue Pete with the hammer down on the ground.(the phrase he told everyone as he pointed to his cheek!)

the family =)

the weather was better than we expected, and so we took both kiddos with us to the homecoming festivities and the game.

this was the first year...that we did NOT leave early!!

Brigham had a blast. Tatum was snug as a bug the whole time. She took two naps in the snugli, and nursed during the first half of the game. what a trooper!!

wishing you a haunting good time and a safe Halloween tomorrow! I'll be back with pictures later this week!!