Christmas 2011

It always comes and goes so fast doesn't it?  We had such a great holiday with our family this year and I still can't believe how spoiled we are.

The day before Christmas Eve we always go out to dinner with my family.  We went here for the second year in a row, and as usual it did not disappoint.  

We spent Christmas Eve with my hubby's side of the family decorating cookies for Santa, eating munchies, and opening our Christmas pajamas.

Christmas day was action packed this year.  The moment I was waiting for all holiday season was for my daughter to see her kitchen from Santa.  The first thing she did was run over and give me a big hug.  It was so sweet!

 We opened our few gifts then got ready and went to a short church meeting.  It was wonderful, lots of beautiful music and narration about the birth of Christ.

Then we headed over to my parents house for our traditional breakfast....crepes, berries, breakfast casserole, muffins, sausage, orange juice, chocolate milk, so much food and I always eat too much!  Then it literally takes us about 2 hours to do our gifts.  We do it one at a time and my parents do sooooo much (almost too much) that it just takes forever.  But I love it.  I love seeing my family enjoy what we have given them.

My brother and his new wife.  Cute newlyweds!

Me and the hubs

 This was a running joke all week, we just can't get off the smart phones!

These are the hats we got for my brother and his wife.  Every time the family plays games, one of these two will win.  And I mean EVERY time.  But somehow they do it under the radar, so therefore, their nicknames are the Silent Killers.

This little collage shows the gift that was a hit with the folks.  We took pictures of each of the kids and framed them separately.  The kids also wrote a love letter to each grandparent (with our help, of course) about what they love about them.

You know it's a hit when Mom gets emotional!  :)

Then we headed over to my in-laws house and did the whole gift thing/dinner with them.

These are the quilts Mark's Mom had made for him and his siblings.  They are made out of their dad's old t-shirts.  Rob passed away this past January so it was very touching.

 My sister in-law made these darling skirts for the girls.  You can't see the red ribbon on the bottom, but they turned out darling!

And as always we went back to my parents for game playing until around midnight.  

It's a long day but I love every minute of it!

Hope you had a great Christmas!

The Simple Things

My sweetheart and our oldest enjoying the lights.

I hope you and yours have a Merry Christmas!

Participating in Rebecca's The Simple Things link party.  This is my first time participating in this challenge, hopefully my photography can get better!

Love

I pinned this video on Pinterest yesterday, but had to share it here as well.  For the full back story, go to Becky Higgin's blog (hopefully it's ok that I post it here!).  I found Jenny's story so inspiring.  And she looks so much fun!  How awesome would it be to document a vacation this way?  Definitely more fun than showing people a slide show of pictures. :)

Buried--And What I've Been Pinning

I've been gone for awhile.  We finished our house and moved in and instead of giving you all the boring details of how behind/unorganized/scattered I feel, I'm just going to jump right into some new posts.

Lately I've been addicted to Pinterest.  If you want to follow me click here:



Here are some fun things I've pinned lately:

• Cute hairstyle tutorials from The Small Things Blog.  Seriously, her stuff is darling and here's the kicker--they are totally doable.  Even for a hair-styling-impaired person like myself.  I'm going to try this half french twist this Friday night for our annual Christmas dinner.  I've also done this and this recently and love them!

• Doesn't this candy cane trifle from the The Scrap Shoppe Blog look amazing? I'm going to make it Christmas Eve.  YUM!

• The fashion on Pinterest is so inspiring.  I have yet to actually copy an outfit, but I'm always drawn to the more casual looks that still look put together--something that seems like such a challenge for me lately:

• I somehow stumbled upon Sara at The Yellow Cape Cod, and I love her style.  I'm thinking about incorporating a lot of her ideas into our new house, particularly these striped drapes:

• And finally, a little humor:

Source: someecards.com via Amber on Pinterest