2009 Year in review.

Yes, I'm doing an end of the year review post. I know posts like this are being mocked, but I don't care. This was an exciting year for us. Don't worry, I'll make it short. Here I go.

1. Mike graduated from medical school and officially became a doctor. I'm so proud of him.
2. We moved to NC where Mike started his career as a doctor. So far, residency has been a great experience for him.
3. We started making money. :) No more government aid for us. You have no idea how happy this makes me.
4. Said good-bye to Suzi. She was a good car.
5. Got a minivan. Something I swore I'd never do. But love it!!
6. Mike got a truck. Something he's wanted for a long time. :)
7. Found out we were expecting baby #3.
8. Made our very last credit card payment, on the very last day of the year.

That's about it folks, at least for the major highlights. I know I am leaving a lot out. There were so many things that happened this year and these are just the things that stick out the most to me. It was a really great year and went by so fast. We are excited to see what 2010 brings. Besides a new baby that is. :)

Traditiooooooon, tradition!

I love Christmas traditions. This year we have Mary and Eric and Eric's sister Dez here to join in on them with us. Oh and Koa, lets not forget Koa. Poor dog that is being tortured by my kids. In fact, they fed him so many goldfish this morning that he puked...and Mike stepped in it. His reaction was priceless. haahaha. Anyhoo...where was I. Oh yes. Traditions.

Biscuits and gravy...check. (the snowman biscuits just might become part of this tradition. They turned out so cute.)

Gingerbread houses...check.

Me and Mike's train.

Mary and Eric's House

Dez's house.

Lulu's house. (After she put candy on, she took it right back off and ate it.)

Jacob's house. (I think he did a pretty good job. lol.)

Fettuccine Alfredo dinner...check. (sorry no pictures of that one.)

What is any vacation without plenty of video game playing...check. (Mike has been loving having Eric's x-box here.)
Here is Lulu laying next to Uncle Eric while he plays a game. This was kind of surprising since they've been here for 3 days and she has been scared of him (and glaring at them all) the whole time. I guess this is a good sign she is warming up to him. lol.

Stocking stuffers from the dollar store picked out and stockings stuffed and hung by the fireplace...check.

Kids in bed and Santa come and gone...check.

All is calm, all is bright. Now I'm off to bed...after I check facebook. Haa. :) Merry Christmas all!

"SANTA ISN'T REAL!!! They just tell you he is."

Most of you probably read this on my facebook already, but as I was sitting in primary today Santa was mentioned and one little 4 year old sitting just behind me yells out, "SANTA ISN'T REAL! They just tell you he is." Hahahahaha. It was priceless. But it got me to thinking. How do I want to explain Santa at my house. Do I do the traditional thing and tell my kids, "Yes Santa is real and he comes down our chimney and leaves us presents under our tree"? Or, do I explain to them that St. Nick was indeed a real person but is no longer living. But we still give each other presents (or something to that effect).

I have some great Christmas memories as a kid. I remember trying to sneak upstairs every Christmas to peak and see if Santa had come yet. One Christmas I tried to sneak and sleep behind the couch in the living room to sneak a peak. I remember one year staying up with my brothers and sisters discussing whether Santa was real or not. I remember my brother Jeff telling about how my oldest sister told him about a time when she caught a glimpse of Santa. It was a lot of fun. But man, it must be hard work keeping the deception alive. lol.

I can't remember when I found out the truth about Santa, but I wasn't heart broken over it. I didn't care. I was getting a present regardless. But what do I do when my kids come home from church or school upset because so and so said Santa isn't real? On the other hand, do I want my kid to be that kid that spilled the beans?? Christmas was no less magical for me once I knew the truth, but it was sure fun believing.

Cookies and Christmas Trees

I usually forget to get out my camera when we are doing our advent activities. We've done several, but these are some that I've snapped in the last few days. Actually, the sugar cookies are an activity I have scheduled for next week, but on Sunday I really wanted to make them, and I figured it wouldn't hurt to do it twice. :) We didn't actually do much cookie decorating though cause I didn't have a lot to work with since it was a last minute decision. But that's okay. Cause Jacob had fun cutting them out and playing with the dough.

Yesterday we made paper Christmas trees and decorated them with sprinkles and candy. They didn't get passed the sprinkles before they just decided to eat all the candy. Although, when I brought out the marshmallows, Lizzie had fun sticking those on her tree. She calls them snacks. We used karo syrup for glue, cause I'm not a fan of my kids eating candy with Elmer's glue on it. Ick. Or in the words of Lizzie, "ssssick! yyyyucky!"

Jacob LOVED eating the sprinkles.

These are the finished products.

We've got lots more fun stuff planned. If we can get to the store today to buy fruit loops, we are making fruit loop garlands for the tree. I love Christmas!!

Pink Glove Dance

One of my friends posted this on facebook and for some reason it just makes me happy when I watch it. So I thought I'd share. :)

Homemade Christmas

I will admit, it has been nice to be able to buy cute little Christmas decorations this year. Like my oh so cute little nativity scene that is currently sitting on my mantle and the fun little snowmen ornaments hanging on my tree. But I have come to the conclusion that the store bought things will never be as fun and as christmasy as the cheapy, little Christmas crafts we do every year. In passed years we did them out of necessity because we couldn't afford anything else. Now, it just wouldn't be Christmas without them. Like the fun paper chain Jacob and I made together... And the paper snowflakes we made yesterday. This is the 3D one I made. The kids made their own snow flakes (the traditional fold and cut ones) and I was hoping to get pictures of them, but they seemed to have disappeared. I am sure I will find a bunch of shredded snowflakes somewhere around here, since my kids are like hamsters and love shredding paper.

While I was looking up instructions for my 3D snowflake, I found these cute paper ornaments on Familyfun.com. (Have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE that site. Seriously...LOVE!!!)


This is the craft we did today. And all from things we had around the house. Glue, salt, and pine cones from around the yard. Next year I plan to use colored salt.

The kids loved making these. I rolled the pine cones in the glue and then let them shake, shake, shake away. Jacob particularly like this, because he loves making messes. I have to keep the salt (and pepper) shaker out of his reach at all times, or he will empty the entire thing. Just ask Grandma Chidester. :) He discovered salt shakers while we were visiting a few months ago. He has since emptied a couple of salt shakers here just because I forget to take them off the table after dinner. So he was excited that I was actually encouraging him to do this.

Lizzie had fun too. Ignore the snot bubbles. :)

We have lots more project we plan to do this month. Mostly part of our countdown to Christmas, but I think the one I am looking forward to the most is our yearly gingerbread house and train. We are saving that activity for the week of Christmas when Mary and her family will be here. Yay for homemade Christmases. Christmas just wouldn't be the same any other way.

Gingerbread anyone???

This last week Mike had to go to Asheville, NC for a conference. The kids and I decided it would be fun to drive over there and spend the weekend with him. It was a long drive, but I am so glad we went. The first half of the drive was pretty slow going and boring, but once we hit the mountains it was nice. I miss the mountains so I was in heaven. We got there Friday afternoon and Mike took us to the hotel where the conference was being held. I wish we could have stayed here, but it would have been pretty expensive. This place was amazing.

They had a massive display of gingerbread houses there, which turns out was from the national gingerbread competition. This wasn't even half of them.

Here are some of my favorites.

I wish I'd thought to change the settings on my camera for some of these. The lighting was really bad so some pictures turned out really blurry. But the details of some of these houses, like the one in this picture, were just amazing. If you look close you will see a broken egg on the table. Seriously, I wonder how long it took them to make some of these.

I would really like to know how they made the books.

After we looked at all the gingerbread houses we stopped and took a picture in Santa's sleigh. You can't see Santa because Mike is standing in front of him. Rude! :)

This is actually a big fireplace. There was another one on the other side of the room that had a fire in it and people were sitting around it in chairs just relaxing.

The next day after Mike finished for the day we went out and found a park for the kids to play at. It was pretty cold. We were hoping the snow would have stuck for longer than it did, but it was gone before we had a chance to get out. The ground was still wet though and so was all the play equipment at the park. Jacob was wet and cold, cold, cold by the time he climbed back into the van. (Lizzie fell asleep soon after we left the hotel and slept the whole time we were out.) We decided to pick up some dinner on the way back to the hotel and then take the kids swimming. There was a Starbucks next to the Chinese place we stopped at and Mike got us some hot chocolate. Starbucks has some dang good hot chocolate. We decided to let Jacob have some and we didn't get it back after that. He kept hugging it and saying, "it's gooooood."

Once we got back to our room and finished eating we took the kids down to the pool. Mike had taken Jacob down the night before and he got to sit in the hot tub. So when we got down there this time, he went right for it. He sat down in the water and just soaked up the warmth. Mike tried to get him out to go swim with him and he refused. He had to drag him out and into the pool. After he got some good exercise in we let him get back into the hot tub. Lizzie liked the hot tub too. When it was time to go we dried them off and wrapped towels around them, but they both kept trying to jump back in the water. They did not want to leave the pool. Once we got dressed again we bundled back up and went for a drive. Lizzie couldn't move much and she could barely see. She just sat there not quite knowing what to do. Both kids ended up falling asleep. When Lizzie fell asleep this is what she looked like, only with her eyes closed. I couldn't stop laughing. She seriously didn't move at all. But I don't think she minded much that she couldn't move as long as she was warm. We were planning on going to the nature reserve they have there and seeing the "Winter Wonderland" thing they had advertised. When we got there we could see that it was lit up, but there was no way to get in. There were no cars there and all the doors were locked. We were pretty disappointed. It was supposed to be from 6-9pm. We got there at 7pm. Don't know what was up with that. So, we decided instead to go see the Biltmore Inn that we heard so much about. It's Americas biggest mansion that they turned into a hotel. There was a whole community built around it. We couldn't actually see the hotel without a ticket. I guess they light the entire thing up with candles at night and you have to pay through the nose to see it. haha. Next year we might go back and see it. It sounds pretty cool. Anyhoo, it was worth it just to go see the community next to it. It was all lit up and on our way there we got to see a nice firework display. It was awesome. It was too dark to get many pictures but I did manage to get a couple that were not blurry.

I was wishing we had more time to see everything, but alas, we had to head back early this morning to make it to church on time. We will definitely be making trips there in the future. We can't wait to go back.

Count Down With Me

I am starting my Christmas countdown activities and posting them on my One For The Kids blog. I also posted my entire list of activities in case you would rather do them in a different order. :) But again, all these activities are geared towards toddlers so older kids may find them a little boring. But there are a plethora of countdown activities geared towards all ages just a google search away. :)