Christmas is here!

Well at least in our home it is!

I love Christmas time. I love the meaning, and the God sent His son to this earth so that He might save us.  What a wonderful gift of life.  I hope that this season brings joy to every person.  I'm really looking forward to really teaching Elijah the meaning of Christmas this year and starting some of our own little family traditions.  Not sure what they all will be, but I will be sharing them as they come up!

We went last Friday and got our Christmas Tree. A REAL tree.  I don't/won't do fakes.  I love the smell of a fresh tree in the home and every year it gets to look a bit different.  I'm picky about the type of tree, it has to be huge, usually 8-10ft tall and nice and fat, so it takes up like half the room. OK not literally half the room, but in a small room it sometimes feels that way. We hit the jackpot this year.  Greg just keeps saying over and over, that is a big tree. He must forget we always have had a big tree.(he's getting old)

Elijah really enjoyed taking the tree home with us, and then he loved to help us put all the ornaments on.  He didn't really put too many on, he more just handed them all to daddy, and said thank you every time he gave one away to place on the tree.  What a sweet boy.  He also loved the pine cones, you know those wonderful cinnamon smelling ones.  He just wanted to keep holding them and smelling them, and then he would bring them around to us and put them in our face so we could smell them as well. 

Athaiah just watched and played a little with some of the garland.  When we lit up the tree her little girl eyes lit up too.  She loves to just sit and stare at it.  It is fun to see Christmas decorating through the eyes of a child.

After the children went to sleep, we decorated the rest of the house with little things here and there.


When Elijah woke up the next morning, he kept saying wow, and whoa every time he found something new or shinny in another spot.  I again love seeing Christmas through his eyes and just the wonder of it all.  And this is just the decorating part!

We still have to put lights on the outside of the house, maybe that will get done this weekend.  Who knows, we are kind of party poopers and have yet to put lights on the outside of our house.  We have had them since we moved it, just have never gotten around to putting them up!

First Ultrasound

We finally got to see our new little peanut today!

There is nothing like seeing and hearing a heart beat and getting to see a new little baby forming!

Takes my breath away every time.  What a precious gift of life.  I'm so excited to get to meet this new little one in a little over 6 months. It seems like time is really flying these days. Sometimes I just wish I could slow the clock down a bit!

Belated Birthday!

My wonderful husband's birthday was on Monday.  He turned a whole 26 years old. 

To celebrate, I got to take the night off work.  We had a wonderful BBQ pork lunch, a steak dinner, and then we had some wonderful people come and watch our children so we could go and see a movie.  What made it even better?  We only saw the movie with 1 other person!! Talk about an extra special date night, I will admit that is one of the perks of living in a small town.  How often do you get to see a movie with only 1 other person in the whole theatre? It was also a much needed break for the two of us to have a couple of hours with no children to worry about, and just spend some time together.

I think it was a good day.  I hope he enjoyed it, I know I really enjoyed getting to celebrate his life all day!

Thank you Greg for being the best man around.  You are such a wonderful encouragement to me daily and I thank God for you every day.  I couldn't have asked for Him to put a better man into my life.  And our children, well, they couldn't have gotten a better dad!  You are a wonderful gift!

Happy Belated Birthday!

Looking up!

Things are really start to look up around here.

1. I'm over the stomach flu
    *What I learned-mommy's have to be tough cookies, that is rough stuff when taking care of 2 little ones with another on the way, so thankful to my hubby for taking such good care of us all

2. Athaiah is sleeping better.  Still isn't amazing, she is up about every 2 hours, but for the past 1 and 1/2 months it has been every 5-10 min, so 2 hours is a good solid chunk of sleep for me!

3. Elijah is listening a bit better to me, he always listens to daddy which is good.  He continues to grow and learn several new words a day.  I just can't believe how quickly they grow up.  Where did my little baby go?  He is turning into my little boy!

God always works everything out according to his plans.  He has shown me mercy and grace when I need it most.  He has caused me to see character flaws in myself while feeling tired and drained.  I need to have a spirit of THANKFULNESS at all times.  HE has blessed me beyond measure and I owe him everything. 

My spirit of anger was doing great(almost gone, but are they ever really gone?), until I got exhausted.  I would find myself yelling at the kids for nothing.  I had to go back to square one and get things right.  I had to be humble and ask my children for forgiveness.  Yes, this is a very humbling experience even if they don't know quite what it means at this point. I'm so thankful that through all this learning and stretching, I have had the most wonderful and patient husband a girl could ask for.  He has been by my side and has prayed with me daily to help me overcome the many obstacles in life.  We have seen so many of these prays answered and I know it is because he has rallied behind me and has brought everything before God.

Thank you God for such a wonderful family.  I can't believe you have chosen to bless us with another one.  There are days I'm still in shock. But I am ever so grateful because children are such a huge blessing and even when my patience is tested I wouldn't trade them for the world.

 

Rough...

That doesn't even begin to describe our life the past month. Warning-not a very happy post, kinda grumbly in fact.

Athaiah is refusing to sleep.  Which means she is up usually from 1130-230am crying every 5 minutes.  A very draining process for mommy because she only cries louder, unless I go and pick her up and rock her.  As you can guess this has made for a very tired mommy. And no to top things off she is sick with a temp at 102 for the last 24hrs so all the sweet little girl wants to do is be held my mommy all day and all night.  I feel so bad for my little sick one.

My pregnancy this time around seems to be getting the best of me.  I have awful nausea but only once 7pm hits.  So the whole time I'm up with Athaiah all I want to do is puke:(  Doesn't make for a very fun experience. With the other two, I never got sick, so this is a whole new situation for me and I will admit I'm not too keen about it!

Elijah is hitting a stubborn stage.  Now he is still excellent most of the time, but he gets these moments as all kids do where he decides he isn't going to listen to what mommy said and do things his way.  Other times he is an angel and helps me out with anything.  He knows now that his dishes go in the sink after a meal, and to throw garbage in the garbage, and he helps with Athaiah all the time(as best as an almost 2 yr old can anyway).

So it has been rough.  Through these rough times I'm trying to remain positive and keep going.  Some days I will admit it gets extremely difficult and I just pray I can make it through the seemingly endless day.
The  biggest things that helped me the past couple weeks. 
I came home a couple of nights and my husband had done all the dishes that seem to be never ending.
I had 2 friends drop by for a visit and while I was giving the kiddos a bath, I came out to all the dishes done and a good chunk of the put away!
My husband has been so good to me, he has even gotten up quite a few times in the middle of the night when I simply cant get up 1 more time. I thank God that I'm blessed with such an amazing man.

Grass!

Yeah! I'm so happy we have some grass!  Hopefully there will still be some more to come.  But hey some grass is better than no grass.

Depending on how much we get I may fertilize and add more grass seed in the spring so we can finally have a pretty front lawn.  Hopefully I will be able to add some extra flowers to the flower beds as well to really pretty things up!

Sugared Pumpkin Seeds

When we carved the pumpkin for Athaiah's 6 month pictures we decided to do something a bit different with the seeds.  We decided to sugar them instead.

We first washed all the seeds.
Next, we melted 1 stick of butter, added 1/4 c brown sugar,1tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp nutmeg, and 1/2tsp of all spice.  Stir this all together.
Pour pumpkin seeds into the bowl and mix them up well.
Lay them out on a baking sheet so they aren't overlapping. 

(my big helper)

Bake at 350 for 15min, stir them up  bit, then bake for another 15min!
Take them out and enjoy!