Merrrrrry Christmas!

I'm a week late getting pictures up...but maybe that's a testament to how busy we've been and how much fun we've had! :)
Here's a photo recap...

Gingerbread house building with BonBon and Pops. Pops is a Jedi caulker, so he was in charge of icing decor!



Our tradition of the Christmas Cookie Tree decorating with my (april) mom's side of the fam!



Look at those sweet smiles of Avery and Eden! Don't be fooled though...they were both secretly contemplating eating all of their m&ms instead of putting them on the tree.

Decorating the tree...notice Eden, the m&m thief, taking full advantage of Avery being ever so careful in m&m placement.





Handsome mini-man getting bigger and bigger every day:



After eating too much food and decorating even more food, we paused to worship our King's birth and celebrate his arrival in a small stable in Bethlehem. Thank you sweet Jesus for coming to earth as perfectly and humbly as you did! (is it odd that the story was read while my brother wore a Santa hat?!)


We were blessed with amazing gifts this year! Brandon's favorite has been his new iPhone and I've thoroughly enjoyed a shopping spree with my mom! The kids have whole new wardrobes and too many toys to play with! We are BLESSED!
One of our favorite gifts to the kiddos was Bekah and Kevin's present to them. Since Eden and Salem both have names of Hebrew origin, and Kevin is in Hebrew studies up to his elbows this year at SEBTS, Bekah painted their names in Hebrew on canvas. SO COOL! We love it!






We've had an amazing Christmas season with lots and lots of family (that I wish I had more pictures of to post on here!) and we're looking forward to a few more weeks with all of them!

With all the hustle and bustle going on through this time of year though, we pray that all of you blog readers out there took time to reflect on Christ's birth and his coming as a precious baby, our Savior! Our prayer as a family is that we'll never get so overwhelmed with gifts, snow, family time, food, etc...that we forget the importance of this time of year and the reason we enjoy all of those things to begin with, the birth of God's son!

Welcome Emory Jade!

We welcomed a new baby niece into the world this week!
Precious Emory Jade was born to Kim and Justin (brandon's brother) and she is one sweet little bundle of joy!


Is that not the perfect picture of one very proud Daddy!?!
We praise the Lord for you, sweet Emory!

When in Texas...

We're enjoying the many spoils of being in Texas, and we still have a few more weeks left!

One of our first stops was to Donut Stop! Best. Donuts. EVER.


We spent last weekend with my (april) family and spent a very cold couple of minutes out seeing dad's horses. Eden LOVED petting Dusty.



Brandon had fun picking out Judah's gift. Sure the package said it was for an 8 year old and Judah's only 3...but he recognized the holster and cap guns as soon as he pulled them out! He's a true Texan now!


Uncle Tom cooks some mean tenderloin every year for Christmas!


And this picture gets included in this post not only because it's cute but because it's a good look at those really flat Texas plains!



I know I'm behind on blog posts and haven't even posted a Christmas post yet, but I'm trying to get caught up on pictures!
Merry Late Christmas! :)

Not For the Faint of Heart

I don't imagine that we have several blog followers that are avid PETA supporters. None the less, if you are, you might want to skip this post.

Carrying on...
Brandon got to do one of his most favoritest things ever last week while spending time with my fam. Hunting! Pheasant and deer to be exact, but only being successful with pheasant. oh well. :) Fun times none the less.



Brandon carrying some of the day's success...and my brother Matt with his shotgun.





Matt, Dad, Brandon, and Kevin. Good job guys!

mmmmm, good

On a completely unrelated note...
THIS, an excerpt out of Noel Piper's book Treasuring God in our Traditions, desribes exactly how we feel and what we practice with our children as far as Santa is concerned. It's definitely worth a read even if you disagree with us (and her). If you haven't read or bought a copy of her book, I REALLY recommend it. It's awesome!

Harnessing that Crafty Energy

I'm surrounded by craftiness.
Maybe its the Stay At Home Mom factor that is so prevalent among seminary students.
Maybe it's the close-knit community of seminary housing.
Whatever it is, I'm so grateful for amazing friends with amazing talents.
So recently, I decided to take advantage of that talent!

I've been wanting a cutesy bow holder for Eden for over a year now but I couldn't find one I liked enough or I'd find one that was awesome but they wanted me to pay my first born for it. So, I set out to make my own...or at least recruit someone to help me.

Enter: Genny.
Genny is nice. Genny is a perfectionist. Genny can paint. Genny can paint really REALLY well.

So I recruited Genny to help me do this:


She painted the canvas and did SUCH a great job. It's exactly as I was hoping it would turn out. I mean, you can't really tell from just a bow holder, but her painting skills are AMAZING. In turn, she let me take her family's pictures! Fun times!

And then, all I did was hot glue some ribbon to the canvas and called it good! :)

And then add to that our sweet friend, Jeannie, who is crafty as all get out. She's made a good number of Eden's little cute clippies and bows and is THE go-to woman for all your crafting needs. She's Queen of all things crafty!

Final product:

Surprise!

Tomorrow morning is officially our "Christmas morning" with the kiddos. Since we're leaving for Texas soon and obviously will not be hauling gifts with us, we get to open presents tomorrow! yippee!!
That is, unless you're me.
And by that I mean that I got my Christmas present from Brandon yesterday. You see, Brandon is absolutely terrible when it comes to surprises. No, he's good with GETTING the surprise...just not KEEPING the surprise. So once he buys me a gift, it literally tortures every ounce of his being to keep it secret from me. Which often times works in my advantage. However, I'm big into surprises and the idea of waiting until Christmas morning to open all of our gifts...but I can't think of a Christmas that we've actually waited to give each other our presents because he just absolutely can't stand to wait. It's a good thing he doesn't do his Christmas shopping early because then he'd be hard pressed to even wait until Dec. 1st to give away Christmas gifts. You can imagine how awful it is for him to see the stack of wrapped gifts under the tree waiting for the kids to open them. For two weeks now he's been asking if they could just go ahead and rip into them. sheeeeesh. what a cheater.
Anyways. Back to my point.
I got my Christmas present yesterday! And even though it didn't come exactly when I was expecting it, it was still very much a surprise!

So up until yesterday I've taken all of our photos with this:


But I mentioned to him awhile back that it might be nice to have a tiny point and shoot camera to keep in my purse or diaper bag for those occasions when we're out, haven't lugged along the DSLR camera, and want a picture of the kids. (or when we're on the slopes over the Christmas break! woohoo!)
So he got me this:


I thought it was a really cool gift and props to him for paying attention when I've dropped hints. :) Even though my pride takes a hit when I think of taking a picture of my kids with the point and shoot instead of my SLR, at least we'll be able to still capture those moments! And really, for a point and shoot, it takes pretty good photos! see?


but what camera could make those handsome boys look bad?!

So then he complemented my skillz and said, "oh...uh...I was gonna get you a case for it, but...then I thought you could just make one."
So, being spurred on by his confidence in me, I came up with this:


I'm realizing now that I could have fancied it up a bit more, added some more colors or bling to it, and made it look nice and fun. But maybe next time!

So way to go Brandon on a thoughtful, useful, and cool Christmas gift!

Salem at 6 Months!

They say time flies when you're having fun.

But time really flies when you're having fun with a precious baby boy.

Salem is sooooo sweet. Seriously, a piece of cake baby. So precious, I could eat him up. And he's just so easy most of the time. One very good word to describe him: chill. He just chills. He's good with everybody. Smiles at anybody. And loves hanging out.

And now at almost 6 months he's still his sweet charming self.

He's on day 2 of his first solids and loving it.

Is on day 4 of rolling over. (Like I said, he's chill and has been so very content to just lay there until lately!)

His hair sticks straight up on top. all. the. time. But it's adorable, and I don't have it in my yet to put gel in it or anything!

And he thinks his big sister is the funniest person on earth.

Brandon and I have to seriously work hard to get a chuckle from him. But Eden does a little dance for him, screams his name, or jumps up and down, and he's busting a gut.

He's definitely a mama's boy, but LOVES his daddy lots and lots and always gives Brandon really sweet smiles.

We PRAISE the Lord for our sweet baby boy, Salem Luke!

West Texas Beauty

Did I mention we're headed back to Texas for a month for Christmas?

THIS

is just one reason I'm excited about that! (thanks for posting that Jill! Made me miss home!)

Don't get me wrong. NC has it's own amazing creation! The trees are awesome (especially during the Fall!) and the hills seem never-ending.

But those West Texas sunsets get me every time.

Don't we worship an awesome God?!?!

Oh, So Thankful

One for the record books... this was the FIRST year we've ever spent Thanksgiving Day in our own home. AND, we hosted it! We had fun times with Bekah and Kevin, and Jacob and Liz. We're so thankful to have some family out here with us and I'm going to be prideful and say that the six of us really know how to cook some great Turkey Day Dishes! We definitely did not go hungry, actually helping ourselves to thirds and fourths, and then having leftovers for dinner as well. We discovered Jacob is a binge eater and hides his extra helpings in his head. hmmmm...weirdo.

Eden was thankful when she saw the last of the leftover turkey on Saturday evening. Apparently, she only likes the thought of eating turkey, and not so much actually eating it. She definitely doesn't take after her mother on that aspect. We're thankful that she's now recovering from her first battle with pneumonia. I feel like a terrible mother letting my daughter come down with pneumonia. But I'm thankful for Alexander Fleming *(see note below)* and his amazing discovery of penicillin.

Salem decided to spend his Thanksgiving Day by running a fever for the entire day. Again, thankfully, he's over that now and seems to be on the upside of his first cold.

Brandon is thankful that he's got two weeks left of class for this semester. Wow that's gone quick! He's pretty busy wrapping things up for a presentation, book reports, and finals.

And I'm thankful that we get to spend over a month in Texas with family for the Christmas holidays. Soooo looking forward to not having to cram all of our family visits into one week!

But most of all we're thankful for Christ and his blood on the cross allowing us to be adopted children of God!

*I took a serious shot to my ego this evening. After posting this I let Brandon read it, like always and he said, "Hmmm, I didn't know Marie Curie discovered penicillin." My response, "Yep!" Him: "are you sure?" Me: "Uh yeah. I paid attention in 7th grade."

So after that tacky response, he googled it. Apparently, I've gone the last 15 years (and majored in Chemistry) under the impression that Marie Curie discovered the cure-all of penicillin. She in fact, did not. Sad day. She actually discovered radiation. Still cool. But not my point.

Anyways, this Fleming character made the discovery of penicillin on the mold stuff, blah blah blah, you know the story.

All that to say, that I edited the blog post above to make me not sound like a fool...at first it said Marie Curie. I think Madame Curie sounds so much cooler than Fleming Dude, but whatever.

Ok. Science lesson over.

Top Ten Fun!

If you don't regularly read Georgia's blog, you might should reconsider that decision.

I'm an avid blog-stalker of hers. :)

So anyway, thanks to her, I'm posting one of those "tag, you're it" type blogs.

So here it goes.

1. Who is the hottest movie star? ...I don't really know...or care. But when I googled it Zac Efron came up. Isn't he like 16 or something? That's weird.

2. Apart from your house and car, what is the most expensive item you have ever purchased?

...I'm thinking my Canon 50D and 50mm lens. Or maybe a sweet vacay to Phi Phi Island.

3. What is your most treasured memory?

Can I have three? The day I married Brandon. And Eden's and Salem's births.

4. What is the best gift you ever received as a child?

...parents who led me to Christ at the age of 5.

5. What is the biggest mistake you ever made?

I was seriously mean to my mom when I was in high school. She should have locked me in my room. No joke.

6. Four words to describe yourself.

Wife. Mom. Daughter. Sister.

7. What was the highlight and lowlight of your 2009 (I changed that to 2009 since it's almost over!)?

high: Salem's birth

low: The day (unnamed Foundation) yanked Brandon's scholarship for school because he committed to serving the lost overseas rather than be a pulpit pastor. But I'm not bitter.

8. What is your favorite film?

Knotting Hill. ...I know, make fun of me all you want.

9. Tell me one thing I don't know about you.

I have an unjustified fear of cruise ships. In my mind, on a cruise ship, one of two things will happen: I'll be murdered or we'll sink.

10. If you were a comic book strip character, who would you be?

Well, he's not exactly the comic book strip type...but I identify strongly with StrongBad's sarcasm. :)

At this point I should tag people. But I'm not really the tagging type. :) So, if you're reading this and you wanna do a top ten, have at it!

Orange you glad I didn't say Banana?!

Am I the only one that remembers that joke from 4th grade?
...
ok, maybe so.

Eden had an orange for lunch. Well, she ate more than just an orange, but the orange concluded her lunch. When we asked her what it smelled like..."apple!" And when we asked her what it tasted like..."goldfish!"
hmmmm, not sure about that one.

But then she got a bit carred away.
Scarfed down her last slice.
and panick hit me as she began gagging and turning red.

I screamed down the hall for Brandon as my heimlich maneuvre skills came rushing back.

First and hopefully last time I have to perform the heimlich on any of my children.

And then the wretched, slimy orange slice came coughing up.
I was shaking. Angry at the stupid orange. Crying at the thought of what might have been. (I know. ridiculous. ...I always think the worst.)

And then Eden brought me back down to earth... "Mama. I don't like that orange."
Me neither Eden. Me neither.

She may never eat an orange ever again.

LOOT!

This morning we were able to take part in an event that was a HUGE blessing to the Chancler household! Every year before Christmas Bayleaf Baptist Church ministers to SEBTS students and their families by having a "Toy Chest." The members of this church are so amazingly gracious they donate new toys for SEBTS families to purchase at no more than 10% of the original cost. WOW! Every student is invited to participate and doors open at 9 am. So we woke up bright and early this morning to get up to the church to stand in line hoping to be some of the first to rush in! There were about 300 students and families gathered for the event.
Rules were that we could spend $7 per kid or get 3 toys per kid. With 300 people waiting at the doors, we were getting antsy! Before the rush in though what an amazing time of fellowship that we had with friends as we were overwhelmed with the generosity of this church! Before you pass this off as something small...let me tell you that these were all NEW toys. They also had 50 kids bikes for the first 50 people to snatch them up. MacBook Pros (yes 3). I-Pods. Power Wheels. Camcorders. (those last four were among 50 amazing raffles!)
So we rushed in and grabbed our $14 worth for Eden and Salem, fellowshipped with some awesome friends, stuck around to watch friends win rockin cool raffles (Brandon had his fingers crossed for a new MacBook...awww shucks!), and then ended up getting to snatch up a few more of the remaining toys as we were among the few that didn't win a raffle!
All in all, we came away being IMMENSELY blessed by this church and with 2 huge bags of loot for the kiddos! Look at all we scored for just $20!! And the coolest part about it all is that the money that SEBTS students spent for the Christmas toys then goes straight to Lottie Moon. AWESOME!

Going Green

It's the big rage, right?

I mean, even cleaning products are going green.

But this, my friends, is a different kind of green. It's not your "hip" green, or lackadaisical green.
This is committed green.
Dedicated green.
No-looking-back-now green.
This is the future of green.
and dare I even say...FUN green.

Here it comes...

Cloth Diapers...and the 3 Reasons You Just Can't Say No. (have I lost you now? .....c'mon. stick with me here.)

Or maybe a more apt title is the 3 Reasons We Had to Say Yes.

*at this point let me interject that I'm not being all Judge Judy on you if you've decided that disposables are right for your family...but this is why we chose cloth, and I hope you'll at least find it amusing...ok please continue*

FIRST and I guess foremost is finances. I'll keep this one "brief" (pun intended)
...you can do the research on this one if you're actually that interested. At the end of all that research you'll find that using cloth (of course variables should be considered...ie how many, washing frequency, type purchased, etc) will save you around $1200 PER BABY BOOTY. That's right. You might as well be strapping benjamins to your child's heiny and tossin' them out with last night's leftovers. This was our motivation when we made the "plunge" (hehe).
...since then, our motivation has shifted a little...

SECOND and the reason behind my catchy title, the environment. *insert CNN's breaking news music here* Did you know that one baby produces an average of 1 ton of disposable diaper trash?! And that's if they are potty trained at 2! Say it with me here, "NASTY!" That's serious, non-biodegradable, human waste we're talking about. Sorry for grossing you all out...or making you uncomfortable, or feel guilty...REALLY not my point.
I'm moving on...so this is our bigger motivation now. We're "saving the planet" one booty at a time. :) Really, we as believers need to be doing all we can to preserve God's creation. And putting our kiddo's in cloth is just one way we can. I no longer stare in sickening amazement at the amount of diapers my kids pee in once or twice and then go to a landfill. I'm comforted knowing that using cloth is a very large way (minus 2 tons of diaper trash on our part) we can help save God's awesome creation.
That being said, I'm not going to be all Disposable Nazi on you...I admit to you that we do still use disposables occasionally (shock and awe!). Let's admit it, they're occasionally easier. But if we're home, Salem's booty is wrapped in cloth.

THIRD and really the most exciting part of the post. (If you've made it this far, congratulations!)
sooooooooooooooooooo CUTE!!


Who wouldn't want a baby butt to look like that!
When your choices can include items such as this, using cloth diapers can be sooo addicting!
I realize that's when things start getting pricey and you have to stay aware that you aren't actually spending MORE on cloth than you would disposables...but if you're just doing it to "Go Green" then it's a WIN/WIN!! Glad to say that we've not yet spent MORE on cloth than sposies though! :) But they're so much cuter than paper pampers! :)



And in the end, when your kiddos have potty trained, and you are past the diaper era of your life, you can sell those used cloth diapers on sites like diaperswappers.com. That's IF those diapers that you spent only $400 on to diaper 4 children still have any life left in them. But eh, $400 on 4 kids ain't shabby!

Other reasons to consider cloth would be that it's healthier for your kiddo (do you know what chemicals are used in disposables to absorb pee?!?!) And you can change as often as you want. No more disappointments after your sweet baby poos in a diaper she's worn for 5 seconds. Washing 20 diapers isn't any harder than washing 15. And we've found that with Salem, cloth works WAY BETTER at keeping in those poo-splosions!
And THAT, fellow parents, is what it's all about. :)

I could literally fill an entire new post with links upon links of information, cloth diaper retailers, advice, stuff I recommend, etc...but I'll spare you. Contact me if you want boatloads of info.

But just so you know that times have changed and these aren't your mama's cloth diapers any more folks, check out the selection.

It's a whole world you didn't even know existed!

Modeling Gig

As a photographer, I'm a little ashamed to admit that I've done a pretty poor job of utilizing my kids as subjects. Those days are behind me. So here's Eden modeling her new mommy-made hats. Isn't she a doll?! LOVE the one where I asked her to say, "Cheese!"

Crafty Shmafty

Let's get one thing straight...I'm not bragging. I'm truly not that crafty.
I just occasionally get inspired and maybe a little in over my head.

That being said, this past weekend I took part in the SEBTS Craft and Bake Sale.
soooooo fun. Mainly because friends are awesome and it was fun doing this together.

So my inspiration for deciding to take part in the craft show thing, was these.
(side note...etsy is wayyyyyy addicting!)
Aren't they so adorable! So I was maybe a little egotistical and thought to myself, "I should do that!" So I set out on a croc-crocheting adventure.
Let's back up a bit.

Several years ago I spent the summer in Tasmania, Australia working in a church. One of our community outreach projects was to host a crafting afternoon for senior citizens. I learned to make what I like to call my "holy grail goblet" using a wood spinner thing. fun times. But I also learned to crochet, along with several 60 and 70 year old women. I know. I'm too cool for school. I started out with simple scarfs...moved on to baby blankets...you get the idea.

Fast forward to now.
How I got it in my head I could all of a sudden follow a pattern after little to no crochet knowledge, I don't know. But I dove in. And after about 4 croc-duds, I got the hang of it!




And then I got bored with crocs and needed something else.
Well that and Brandon reminded me of the fundamentals of economics, that you gotta have some variety if you want people to buy something.

So I set out on crochet journey #2. And struck gold.
Aren't those A.D.O.R.A.B.L.E. ?!?!? Yeah, I agree. People are so creative. How these ladies come up with these patterns is beyond me. They must not have 2 kids. :)
*insert picture here of Eden and her new mommy-made hat!* (woops)

So I whipped out 10 or so hats for the SEBTS sale, 12 or so pairs of baby-crocs, toted my goods and myself up to the sale and set up shop.
My sweet and oh-so-incredibly-crafty friend shared a table with me. Her stuff is so cute!! Isn't that onesie and tutu with matching wand soooo precious?!




Let's also be clear about the fact that I DO NOT work for the actual creators of crocs, and that I totally ripped off their logo, and probably illegally displayed it for the benefit of selling some crocheted baby slippers that happen to resemble crocs (trademarked!). I'm hoping they're kind.


All in all...had fun. Made some dough (woohoo for profit!). And saw some amazing women with some incredible talent.

ps...if you happen to need some baby-crocs (trademarked!) for a baby shower, please let me know because I came home with several pair! :)