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!