Be Back Soon!

Taking a little blog break to catch up on cleaning, relaxing, and lots of playing. Been freezing my butt off outside pushing Ella on her new play set. Fun, cold, times!

Lots of new pics and posts to come in the next couple of days..

Christmas Pics are up and can be viewed on facebook by clicking here!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Happy Christmas Eve!

Merry Christmas!

We took a couple of pics yesterday at the mall, but oh my, getting them both to look at the camera was a pain! I loved this pic though because of my sweet little guy smiling at his Mama. And Ella, in typical Ella fashion, "Cheese-ing it up!

Melts my heart!!!

Ella's Christmas Program

Here are some of the videos from Ella's Christmas Program at Pre-School. She was pretty shy through most of the program, but we thought she was cute even just standing there lol! We just couldn't believe how much older she seemed standing there with her class. I have pictures, too, but I wont be able to post them until we get home from TN.

Love.

Did I mention yet that I LOVE the crafts my little girl brings home from school??!?!
LOVE them!!!!

Not Me!

My very first "Not Me, Monday"





You all know how horrible I am at posting regularly, so I am not promising this as an all the time thing. In fact, it probably wont be, but it's something I look forward to reading every week and I thought I'd throw in one for you all! :)



This is something that was started on the blog "My Charming Kids". If you follow the link below and go check them out, I promise you will have a couple of good laughs!







"Are you feeling guilty for using hand soap as body wash in the tub because grocery shopping is long overdue? Overcome with shame because raised your voice at your kids outside church yesterday and you're pretty sure the pastor overheard you? Well don't be! Not Me! Monday was born out of my desire to admit some of my imperfections and reveal a few moments I'd rather forget. You may find it therapeutic to join in and do the same thing!" -MckMama

So..here goes!

My two year old does NOT know that she can almost always find some kind of chocolate on my nightstand in the morning. There could NOT be sweets on my nightstand, because I definitely do NOT eat chocolate in bed almost every night after the kids go to sleep. I mean seriously! Who does that!? And for the record, I definitely didn't let her have white chocolate chips before breakfast yesterday. And I MOST DEFINITELY did NOT help her finish them off this morning. Nope. Not me!

Hee. ;)

Santa at Storytime!

We went to storytime at Barnes and Noble tonight and were so surprised to see that Santa was there!! He read The Polar Express! It was alot of fun and Ella was so excited. I wish I would have brought my camera, but I thought it would just be the usual story and didn't realize how special it would be! What a bummer! They had a special time where the kids could visit with Santa and sit on his lap and you could take pictures. This would have been way better then paying the outrageous prices at the mall. But nope. No camera with me, go figure!

They had cookies and hot chocolate for the kids and this made Ella *very* happy.

Ella wouldn't sit on his lap. When I tried to put her up there she started to cry. But she did say hello to him and tried to call back that she wanted a Dora doll as we walked away. Hee hee. Kinda reminded me of Ralphie on Christmas Story! Noah loved Santa, but he loves people in general!

Here are a couple of pics from my cell phone:

This is how Ella wanted to take her pic "with" Santa. lol

And here is Noah..not even looking at the camera, but you get the idea!

December Days

We have had a super busy week!

Just realized I needed to go backwards a few days and post some pics I skipped!

On Monday night, Ella and I got an itch to decorate the house for Christmas. It was before we got our tree and Ella kept asking and asking when we were going to get a tree. So! I decided to send Randy out to the shed for the house decorations!

Ella had a bath and put on her Christmas jammies. Then we decorated and ate Candy Cane Oreos and watched Christmas movies! It was alot of fun. It made me smile to see how excited she was over it all.

Ella liked getting to drink out of Daddy's cup from when he was little.

Yesterday, I ended up having the day off work. Since I am working some now, Randy's days off are usually the days I have to work. That way we don't have to find a babysitter. Well, we were pretty excited that we ended up all being off and together. It was a rainy, yucky day, but we still had alot of fun.

After a quick shopping trip, we decided to stop by the pet store so Ella could look around. She LOVED this. We spent forever just walking around and watching all the animals play. It was like a mini Greenville Zoo. hee hee.

Then we decided to stop by the mall and look around. We went and saw Santa, although Ella wasn't quite ready to sit on his lap yet. She did talk to him some and touched his hand. They are just making friends and warming up lol.

Don't want a repeat of last year...LOL

Ella wouldn't wear the reindeer ears. Noah liked them though :)

It was a fun time just walking around and enjoying each other. We were able to get out of the house, but still stay dry!

It also marked a big accomplishment for Noah. He was giving us a ton of trouble taking a bottle when I went back to work. Now that I've been back awhile and he's had lots of practice, he finally started caving and taking the bottle easily from Randy. Up until now, he would still refuse to take one from me. Well, we decided to bring a bottle along to the mall so that I wouldn't have to worry about stopping to feed him. Well, I decided to give it a try and feed him the bottle and he took it with no problem! I'm so excited because it will be nice to take a bottle along occasionally to places like church and stuff where it can be inconvenient to stop and feed him.

Oh! Back to Christmas stuff. It was brought to my attention that on my last post I forgot to include a picture of the finished tree!! Oops! I wish I could get my camera to take one where the lights show up. The flash always makes them go away. I'm not sure how to change the settings on manual to make it come out right. So..just pretend you can see the pretty lights, too ;)

Ella made an angel today at school so we decided to swap it out and put it on the top of our tree. It looks so cute up there!

My "secret sister" from church gave me this last year and I love it so much. It would be so simple to make as a gift for someone! It's just a glass bowl with potpourri and Christmas lights inside. Then a doily tied on top with a ribbon. So cute and simple. The heat from the lights actually makes the potpourri smell really nice, too!

O' Christmas TREE!

What fun Christmas is!!!

We picked Ella up from school today and went to buy our Christmas tree. This made me soooo happy because I am going to my parent's house in a couple of weeks and I wanted to enjoy my tree as long as possible before we go. It just seems like Christmas flies right by. So this time I am prepared and ready to soak up every minute!

Ella made getting a tree so much fun. She loved looking at all of them and running around the tree farm like crazy!

One of our favorite Christmas traditions is going to the same tree farm every year to pick our tree. They have some already cut or you can choose one and cut it down. We have always like some of the pre-cut better, but I think next year we will cut one down just for fun with the kiddos.

Here are some comparison pics:
Year One at Wilson's Tree Farm
Year Two.

And of course, this year. Year Three!

Miss Ella. The Diva, Drama Queen, Princess. Yep, she just had to wear her glasses as she shopped for the perfect tree. Although, I must admit, it WAS really bright out. I wore mine the whole time, too. :)

Noah was so happy to get his first Christmas Tree!

They gave Ella a little Christmas Tree coloring book which she thought was pretty awesome!

Trying to decide which tree is "the one". Saw some different ones, like this one below that had a white coloring to it. Ella enjoyed getting to run around between all of the trees and then trying to find us again!
Loaded up and ready to go!
And now we're ready to decorate!

This little bird used to go in Randy's tree when he was a kid. He says it was always one of his favorite things to add to the tree. He's laughing at me for making him take a pic while he does it. But I think it's special! ;)

Ella got to add the star on top. She liked getting to reach up high!

While we were decorating and remember each ornament, I thought it would be cool to share some with you. While I was waiting on pics to load, I was catching up on some friends blogs. I saw that my friend Sheila had planned something similar! Wow, great minds think alike :))

She is going to be doing hers one by one, but I am just going to show you a few of our special ones in this post only.

Hope you enjoy!

This is one of my very favorites. Some great friends from back home in Florida gave me this the Christmas that Randy and I were engaged.
Then once we were married and living here in NC, we were given this ornament below. A couple that we are friends with wrapped this ornament and gave it to us our first Christmas. They chose it out of their own collection to pass onto us to help us to build a collection of our own. It was one of the most thoughtful things ever!! They'll be moving before long, but we will always think of them this time of year!

Here's one that Randy made when he was little. It's so cute!!

Here's one of me in my cemented hair, cheer leading days. Always makes me laugh.

LOVE this one from the Christmas I was pregnant with Ella.

Not an ornament, but still something cute that Randy made!

Ella's First Christmas. Precious.
This was one of my favorites that my parents got me when I was younger. I always liked to collect angel ornaments. A year or two before I got married, I pulled this one out of the box and her hands had fallen off!! Maybe from the heat in the attic? Who knows, but I just couldn't throw her away. So she still hangs in the tree, hand-less. LOL
Ella made this angel last year. The body is from her feet and the wings were from her hands. So sweet.

My mom got us this one last year. Ella says, "There we are, riding in our car!"

This one is so special to me. I love collecting the "Willow Tree" figurines. When I saw the one like this with the mother holding her bigger baby, I just had to have it. It captures so perfectly the way it feels to hold your baby when they aren't so little anymore. Anyways, Randy also found out they had it in an ornament form. Since we buy each other an ornament each year, he chose this one for me. I love it so much!

It's called "Hold Close That Which We Hold Dear"


Well, I don't know about your house, but ours is "Beginning to look alot like Christmas"