cookies, cookies, cookies!

a couple of weeks before christmas, the ladies' Bible study that i'm a part of hosted a cookie exchange for the women in our church. if you know me, you know that this is right down my alley! i'd been wanting to help plan one of these, so i mentioned it to one of the ladies... and she said she'd been wanting to have one too. so the next thing ya know, this cookie exchange was in the works! we ended up making it a salad luncheon, too, which i guess helped take away a little of the guilt from all the cookies! :)

we had fun decorating the tables for christmas with china and beautiful centerpieces! each table ended up looking very different, and they all looked so festive... here's a picture of the table that kristie and i decorated.


and here's what the other beautiful tables looked like! didn't the ladies do a great job?!


before we exchanged cookies, we played a couple of christmas games. first, each table was given a list of christmas song titles that have been reworded. the object of the game was to figure out the actual titles of the songs. for example, "Removed In A Bovine Feeding Trough" would be what christmas carol??? and how about "Are You Experiencing Parallel Auditory Input?" one of my favorites was "Female Ancestor Collides with Rangifer Tarandus"... i think everybody had a lot of fun laughing over these. and the winning table got to be first in line for lunch!

for the other game, each table chose one representative for the christmas carol trivia game. they sound easy till you start to think about it... and poor mrs. post kept getting the really hard ones! there was much audience participation/helping, though, so i think everybody had fun. ashley from my table ended up winning, and the prize was for the winning table to be first in line for the cookie exchange! woohoo! way to go, ashley! :) you can see me grilling the contestants below...


and then it was time for the cookie exchange! there were so many different kinds of treats to choose from...




here's my tin full of goodies to take home! those peppermint swirls were my favorite... so delicious and cute too!


the kids were soooo excited when i came home with a box full of cookies!


here's ethan enforcing mommy's "just one cookie" rule! ha! i'd put the tin near them to snap a few pictures, and caroline was ready to take full advantage of me being distracted for the moment. thanks for protecting mommy's cookies, ethan! way to go, son!


i had a great time helping host this cookie exchange, and i hope we'll do it again next year. we also had little cookie recipe books printed that included most of the recipes for the cookies that we took home... i can't wait to detox from christmas goodies so that i can experiment with some of my favorites from the cookie tin!

o, christmas tree

there's just something about a christmas tree that makes me smile. i love switching on the lights as soon as i get up, and i love the smell of a real tree in our little house. i grew up with only artificial trees, so i have especially enjoyed having real trees in our home each year. one of my most favorite memories of our christmas tree is from christmas 2006, when caroline was a newborn. she and i spent her middle-of-the-night feedings cozied up under a blanket in the living room with only the christmas lights shining. boy, that sure made 2 AM a much more pleasant time to be awake!

i'm not very good at branching out and doing different things with the tree. our tree pictures from year to year look pretty much the same, as i am addicted to the old-fashioned look with red being the dominating color (shocker for those of you that really know me!). i did experiment with stringing up garland for the first time this year, which i hope to get better at in the years to come!! after three re-adjustments of the garland, brian and i decided it was a skill to be mastered and that this year was not the year to master it. :)

the kids' ornaments for this year don't really carry with them a story of significance, but they sure are cute, and the kids loved them. since ethan is into all things transportation, the little wooden airplane was a very fitting choice for him this year. during the past month, he could be found standing by the tree, spinning the little propeller on his airplane. :)


for caroline's ornament, we chose a small snowglobe that is a cookie on the bottom and has a little gingerbread girl inside. she is into baking and cooking in her little kitchen, and who doesn't love snowglobes?! she was allowed to shake the snowglobe as long as it stayed on the tree, so i was accustomed to seeing the whole tree shake as caroline obediently played with her ornament. :)


our family ornament for this year was indeed a special one. the sonogram frame ornament was a little bigger than i'd expected, but it still made me smile every time i passed by it. amelia's little face just lit up the tree even more... we surely are praying, dreaming, and waiting for her!


we usually enjoy our christmas tree until around new year's, but we had to abruptly take down our tree this past weekend. after noticing a few mosquitoes lying around our living room floor and on furniture, brian took a closer look at the base of our tree to find hundreds and hundreds of baby bugs feasting on the trunk of our beautiful christmas tree. our tree skirt had become the final resting place for hundreds of dead mosquitoes...or they were babies who had not yet woken up (sorry, i'm not gil grissom... i'm sure there's more technical terms for this stuff!). whatever stage they were in, we did NOT want them in our living room! especially if they were babies about to turn into adults!!!! i didn't even want to think about how many bugs were in the tree base. so much for our relaxing saturday evening... we had to carefully remove all of the ornaments without disturbing the tree too much, and then we had to figure out how to get the tree out the door without spilling the bug-infested water all over the place. it was quite a scene, i am sure. oh to have been a fly (or mosquito!) on the wall... we finally got the tree out the door, after pathetically attempting to cover it to contain the bug masses. we had to laugh at the sight in our driveway. our poor tree... once decorated with excitement and joy now looked as if it was ready for execution. we successfully got rid of all the bugs, and we're still pondering how we can prevent this next year. we've had real trees every year, but we've never had this problem. of course, it was a very humid 75 degrees on christmas morning, and the whole week was pretty much just as warm. combine that with a bowl of standing water, and you've got a five star resort for bugs. we also discovered that the mosquitoes brought some friends... there were also tons of aphids and some other type of bug that we have yet to identify. anyway, we're assuming that when we bought our tree, some bug larvae or egg sacs or something were thrown in for free. since it never really got that cold here, the bugs thrived instead of died. YUCK. as we were cleaning up the mess, i was trying to decide if i'd rather be doing that or shoveling 2 feet of snow...

anyway, sorry if that grosses you out. i'm itching like crazy as i write this. i'm curious to hear if anyone else has had that problem, especially those of you who had the same warm december that we did. my love for real trees has not wavered, despite the many warm thoughts i had on saturday night toward artificial trees... i'm sure we'll still get a real tree next year, and we'll shake it like crazy before bringing it inside!

remembering christmas

is christmas really over already? i can't believe this month has come and gone! what a wonderful christmas we had... as i've been packing up all of our christmas decorations, i've been contemplating the memories made over the past few days. the smiles on the kids' faces as they were completely surprised by our gift... the smile on my husband's face as he was completely surprised by his mom's gift...ethan and caroline singing happy birthday to jesus on christmas morning... and the memorable times we spent with family. i have several blog posts dancing in my head (i guess that'd be the modern day version of sugar plum fairies?!), and i can't wait to share some priceless pictures of christmas 2008.

the official christmas celebration may be completed for this year, but don't tell caroline. she can still be found spinning around, singing "away in a manger" at the top of her lungs. i guess she's just carrying out the idea that we should be celebrating Christ's birth all year long! so here at tenlittletoes, it's gonna be christmas a little while longer! stay tuned for more...

come, thou long expected Jesus!

Come, thou long expected Jesus,
born to set thy people free;
from our fears and sins release us,
let us find our rest in thee.
Israel's strength and consolation,
hope of all the earth thou art;
dear desire of every nation,
joy of every longing heart.

Born thy people to deliver,
born a child and yet a King,
born to reign in us forever,
now thy gracious kingdom bring.
By thine own eternal spirit
rule in all our hearts alone;
by thine all sufficient merit,
raise us to thy glorious throne.

anticipation of The Gift

our advent chain is getting shorter and shorter, which can only mean one thing.... it's almost christmas! these past couple of weeks sure have flown by, and i'm sure most of you feel the same way. many of my great intentions for doing special things with the kids have fallen by the wayside, but i've tried to at least talk about the significance of christmas with them on a daily, if not hourly, basis! ethan is really getting the hang of the basics of the nativity story, including the fact that baby Jesus' mother was named Married. and caroline can tell you what the angels sang... "glory...God...highEST!!!!" (my kids LOVE that line... remember ethan last year?!)

the kids experienced round four (yes, round four already!) of presents today as we took a day trip to visit brian's extended family. boy, do these kids have a lot of family that love them and want to bless them with toys!!!!! it seems like they are opening presents every few days, which has caused ethan to beg to open the few little gifts under our tree. i was initially aggravated by his impatient and selfish attitude, but my mom pointed out, "what do you expect?! he's been opening presents for the last two weeks!" very good point. so i've tried to patiently explain that we will wait for these presents until christmas morning, just like God's people had to be patient and wait for the Messiah to come. i know, in some ways, that is a very weak analogy, but i am determined for our kids to think first of JESUS when they think of christmas, not presents. is that a lofty goal? absolutely. is it nearly impossible when they are opening up presents from loved ones left and right? absolutely. but i think they will always have presents to open from relatives because our families enjoy blessing them and watching them open their gifts. no one person goes overboard, but when you add it all up, it's slightly overwhelming! i'm thankful in a way that it is all spread out vs. a truck load of gifts on christmas day. as our children grow older, i know the opportunities to focus on the absolutely amazing gift of Christ's birth will only increase. so as we say a heartfelt "thank you" to all of the giftgivers, i remind myself to not be stressed by the avalanche of gifts. i know that my greatest efforts to "save christmas" in the hearts of my children are futile if i think i can actually do it in my own strength. i pray that over the years, God will use our meager efforts of consistency to open our childrens' hearts to the reality of the Beauty of Christmas.

i will enjoy these last couple of days of christmas, including round 5, 6, and 7 of presents (whew!). and when all the wrapping paper is thrown away, all the little twisty tie things are finally taken off the toys, and all the toys are put somewhere, i pray that the beautiful reality of christmas will still ring in our hearts: Jesus humbled Himself to become "Immanuel, which means God with us"(one of ethan's favorite memory verses, matthew 1:23). He was born so that we might Live.

glory to God in the highest!

the obligatory family christmas picture!

i am saving you all the trouble of walking out in the freezing weather today (or foggy yet 75 degree weather as the case may be here!) to check your mail... here is our christmas card from our family to yours. i know that last year, i resolved to get christmas cards mailed out this year... but there's something about being in my third trimester of pregnancy that sounds like an awfully good excuse to have dropped the ball again this year! this picture was taken before church last sunday morning. we actually got up early and pretended that we had to be at church 30 minutes earlier than we actually needed to be there. (novel idea! we should really try that every sunday, and perhaps we'll be on time for sunday school one of these days!!!) this was a much better approach than attempting the after-church-imminent-meltdown-due-to-hunger-and-fatigue photo shoot of ye days of olde. and the "you can have a cookie on the way to church if you'll just look at the camera" motivation worked beautifully this year. maybe i should have thrown in a "you have to smile" stipulation for caroline, but i'm just glad that she's looking at the camera! :) our new camera has a great feature on its self-timer where it does not take the picture until everyone is looking. very very cool. i think there were a few times during this photo shoot when that little green light was blinking for at least 30 seconds, but hey, everyone is looking! :) we'll really put that feature to the test next year with 3 little ones!!! as you can see to the right, the smart little green light caught sweet caroline smiling in at least one picture... but i don't think the rest of us looked too great in that one!

i hope you are all having a wonderful weekend as we count down the final days till christmas! ethan is so excited that he can hardly stand it.

are you ready for christmas?

i just read this devotional on being spiritually ready for christmas vs. having everything on our list checked off... here is an excerpt:

I wonder, if Jesus were making a holiday preparations list, what would He include? What if those who were there on Christ’s birth day could advise us on getting ready for Christmas? What would be on their list?

Joseph might recommend we listen closely to the voice of God to prepare.
Mary may suggest we ponder the miracles of heaven.
Perhaps the angels would propose we sing about the King.
The shepherds may gently guide us to follow their act of worship.
Possibly the wise men would teach us to give Jesus our most valuable gifts.
The innkeeper may suggest “Hospitality: open your heart and home.”
And Jesus’ list would likely encourage us to be a light on the hill pointing the way for others to know Him.

with one week to go until christmas morning, i hope you'll take time to read this devotional to be encouraged in the things that matter this christmas season!

allllll aboard!

ethan's christmas spoilage sure did start early this year! i got a call from my sweet grandma last week. she has been so excited about things she'd ordered for the kids for christmas... and a couple of weeks ago, everything arrived at her house except for the little train set that she picked out for ethan. she was so disgusted that his gift was backordered that she just marched down to the local hobby shop (that i didn't know existed!) and bought him a lionel electric train set! a lionel! now, that really meant nothing to me until brian told me that lionel is the classic collectors' kind. we're not talkin thomas and percy here, people! i later found out that both of my uncles and my dad all had lionel sets growing up, and probably most men my parents' age did too! (or still do! ha!) anyway, grandma was so excited to give ethan this gift, and he was so excited about the surprise from grandma! our plan was for brian to pick up the huge box from grandma on his way home from work since neither she nor i needed to be lifting it. i told ethan alllll about this surprise, and he could not wait!

welllll, it was raining cats and dogs and elephants and giraffes when brian got off work... not exactly the weather to be lugging boxes from car to car... but i knew that we couldn't put ethan off about this big surprise that i'd been talking about all day. so my dear husband still picked up the train, and when he walked in the door, i had to laugh. as brian dripped water all over our foyer floor, i couldn't help but think of the cosby show episode where bill has to keep going out in the storm. :) (does anybody else remember that one?!) brian was so patient to humor me and stand there for a picture! you can't see the rain behind brian in the picture, but it was a comin' down...


i was heading over to brian's mom's house for a high school girls' bible study that night, so it was a great night to leave daddy and the kids at home... i mean look at them... does anyone seem concerned that mommy's about to walk out the door!? mommy who!?


while i was gone, they had so much fun setting up the train. ethan didn't understand at first that he didn't have to (get to) push the train. he also didn't know that it has all the bells and whistles (literally!). so brian had him start it up, and ethan was so shocked to see what it could do! by the time the evening was over, ethan knew just how to run it. and he has named his train the american express. we think he means the polar express, but it's just too funny to correct. how does he even know what american express is?! he is too hilarious these days. anyway, brian took these pictures before he put the engineer to bed... i think he likes his new toy- whaddayathink?



when i got home, i found brian happily playing with the train by himself in the middle of the living room. i should have taken a picture of that! :) we stayed up playing with it till almost midnight that night. it is a really really cool train. i am very train ignorant, so when i heard "electric train", i thought that you plugged something in and you just watched the train go round and round the track . oh no no no! there is a throttle (that you can see ethan operating in the above picture) that controls the speed, there's reverse, idle, bells, whistles, train noises, lights, smoke (that stinks so we don't turn that on!), etc. etc. and over the last week we've discovered other features of it. after you leave the train on idle for 35 seconds, the engineer comes on and talks to the dispatch. it's pretty cool. caroline thinks it's pappy talkin'. :) if the train is going at a good speed, and you hit the reverse button, the brakes screech. that's currently daddy and ethan's favorite thing to do.

a few days after grandma gave ethan the train, she got concerned that caroline would feel left out about ethan's big gift. i reassured grandma that caroline was doing just fine with the train. i mean, it is her train too, as far as she's concerned. ethan is pretty good about letting her play with it, though the cars end up off the track more often than on when caroline is running the show. she loves putting the little animals from her birthday cake in one of the boxcars, and pooh and tigger have taken quite a few rides around the track. i think baby jesus has even made it on the train. here you can see caroline trying to cram one last animal in that car before it's off to the zoo.


so we're all a little train crazy around here right now. it is currently under our christmas tree, which is a perfect place for it in our small house! i'm not exactly sure where we will set up the track after christmas, but i don't think ethan's really concerned about that. he enjoys driving the train off the track all over our hallway as much as he enjoys the electric operations of it. i'm happy to see his imagination at work, and if he can just learn how to reconnect the cars all by himself, i will gain an hour of my day back! ha! (i tried to plead train-ignorant about putting the cars together and putting them back on the track, but brian insisted on teaching me how to do it...darn! i love making things like that "daddy things"!!) anyway, it's really cute to see brian and ethan playing with the train together. i need to snap a picture of that before christmas. this is a very special gift that ethan will remember and treasure for a long time. though a lot of the additional pieces are pricey, there are some that are reasonable that we can eventually give him to add to his collection. it will be a fun thing for ethan to collect over the years.

grandma came over this weekend to see her gift in action, and though her boys grew up with lionel sets, she was still impressed with the 2008 version. :) i think she really enjoyed watching brian and ethan have fun with it! she said she told the salesman, "i'm buying this for my great-grandson and his daddy!" boy was she right! :) you can see the picture of her with ethan at the top of the post- i love that picture!! thank you, grandma, for such a generous gift. we love you!

6 weeks to go! and i don't mean till christmas!

amelia and i are in the home stretch, folks! if the next 6 weeks go by as quickly as the last 6 weeks have, then this baby will be here in no time!! here i am as of today, 34 weeks. (and i don't know what is up with the back of my shirt! look at that right angle on my back! ha! now THAT would be uncomfortable!!) i have been feeling GREAT, pregnancy-wise, for the last few weeks, so that has been a nice change and a huge blessing. i am finally getting over my horrible cold-turned-sinus-infection (my first ever and i would love for it to be my last!), and i am so happy to be tasting food again.

we were able to sneak another peek at baby amelia this week at my doctor's appointment because they were "concerned about her size". :) she has definitely chunked up since her sonogram in september! according to the sonogram, amelia is currently weighing in at 5 lbs, 5 oz! and she's gonna keep growin! the sonogram tech was very happy that i had a lot of amniotic fluid... and she said that was one reason i was probably measuring large (besides the big baby!). so now i finally have an explanation for that lady in the grocery store! :) it's my amniotic fluid!! the tech also said that it's why amelia still has plenty of room to kick and play around vs. just twisting and rolling. she is still able to do water aerobics in there! and boy is she at the head of the class!! amelia is quite the mover and the shaker in my belly. i think she moves more than the other two have combined, but it's never really painful like it was with caroline. i can definitely feel and see her wacky contortions, but it's more amusing than anything. anyway, everything on the sonogram looked good. amelia still had her hands in front of her face, so i guess she's just waitin' to suck that thumb like my other two babies! her head was very low, which made it hard for the tech to get a good look at her face... but i was glad that she is making her way toward the exit! :) here's a couple of the pictures that we did get to see of sweet amelia.



don't worry- the umbilical cord is floating freely-- it's not wrapped around her neck like it looks to be in the pictures. it actually looks like she's snuggling with it! i guess we'll have to get her a blankie. :) you can't really see it in the pictures, but we could tell from the video that she has caroline's chin. so i think she's gonna end up looking a lot like her sister. i can't wait to kiss her fat little cheeks!!!

as soon as i got home from my appointment, the kids asked to see the sonogram video. caroline said "heartbeat!" over and over and over until i fastforwarded it to the very short "heartbeat" part of the video. so guess what we watched over and over?! i had to laugh because everytime the screen would change back and forth between the video and 3D pictures, caroline would exclaim, "another mee-yah (amelia)!" she is getting very excited about being a big sister! here's ethan and caroline watching their baby sister's heartbeat.


we came home with over a dozen pictures of the baby, as well as more pictures on cd, so i was more than happy to share a picture with each of the kids. they carried those little photos around all day long. look how proud they are of their little sister! amelia, you are already so loved!!!


one of my doctors told me this week to "lay off the carbs" since amelia is already 5 lbs... i'm sorry, but that is not what this pregnant woman wants to hear 2 weeks before christmas! (and 3 days before a COOKIE EXCHANGE!!) after he said it about 20 times, i just had to laugh. and then i reminded him that my last baby was almost 9 lbs. and he gave me a look that said, "exactly!" i met his daughter that night at a bible study as i was shoving a christmas cookie in my mouth, so i told her to make sure she told her dad that she saw me eating a cookie. :) ha! on the subject of getting really big, i have to share this realization i had the other day. so around thanksgiving, i could really feel amelia pushing against my stomach, and when i rubbed the big round protrusion, i could feel lots of little bumpy lines in a row. i thought surely those have to be her ribs! so on thanksgiving day, i had everybody feeling her ribs... brian's mom, his grandmother, my grandmother... it was show 'n tell! and everybody thought that was so cool. well, the other day i was rubbing the side of my belly, and amelia wasn't really pushing or anything... but i could still feel those bumpy lines. they couldn't be her ribs. it only took me another minute to realize that i've had everyone rubbing my stretch marks. so maybe i should lay off those carbs!

hope your christmas weeks have been merry ones so far!

it's beginning to look alot like christmas!

what a fun time of year this is! it may not be snowing.... shoot, it may not even be that cold, but it is definitely getting closer to christmas! just as most things are more fun now that ethan is getting older, the anticipation of christmas is greater and greater in our house these days with an eager three year old in our midst. i told myself that i was going to keep things simple this year since our sweet baby is on the way next month, and so far, i think i've held to that! i just got out a few of my favorite christmas decorations, mostly things for the kids. i've seen a lot of wonderful wonderful ideas of activities to do with the kids, and i've just told myself, "we'll do that next year!"

we did finally get to go pick out our tree last week... and it took us a whole 5 minutes! i'd say that's a record! here's ethan and daddy giving our tree a big "thumbs up"!


we waited until the next night to decorate the tree, and boy was that interesting this year! ethan and caroline both loved "helping"... brian took his annual post of outfitting all the ornaments with hangers while i had my favorite job of choosing just the right place for each ornament! we all had fun looking at each ornament as we hung them up, talking about who gave them to us and memories associated with each one. ethan loved looking at the ones from my childhood, as well as finding his special ornaments from the past few years. here, you see him with his favorite ornament- the basketball snowman that gram gave him last year. (i just found the kids' 2008 ornaments this past week, so i'll have to blog about that later.) ethan learned how to hang the ornaments on the tree, and he was so careful about the whole process! after every placement, he would ask me, "is this a good place?" i tried really hard to just let his ornaments stay where he put them, but there were a few that i had to move. :) look how proud ethan is of his job well done... and look at the ornaments by his hand that could not be any closer together!! :)


caroline took it upon herself to only handle the most breakable and precious ornaments, and she also was quite intrigued by the hooks. you know, the ones that can put an eye out?! she finally decided to go straight to the source and climbed up on the couch to dig in the ornaments box!


i just realized that i haven't actually taken a picture of our finished tree, so i will do that soon and share it before christmas actually gets here (which is in 2 weeks! i can't believe it!).

one of my favorite christmas decorations is this kids' christmas tree that i found last year at hallmark. i found cute little kid-friendly ornaments at hobby lobby that hang perfectly on the big buttons, and the kids have so much fun taking the ornaments off and putting them back on again. it kind of takes a little of the i-want-to-touch-the-big-tree-incessantly-ness out of them when they have their own little tree to handle. caroline likes to drag it all over the house... poor tree!


i love buying christmas childrens' books after christmas each year at huge discounts... then i just pack them away for the next year with all the decorations. and every year without fail, i get so excited when i open that box of christmas decorations and find the new books that i bought the year before! this year, we have a special basket of christmas books in the living room, and we have really enjoyed reading those each day. by far, the kids' favorites this year are my merry christmas (written by the same author as my favorite kids' bible!) and j is for Jesus: the sweetest story ever told. we are definitely in a "need durable books" phase right now, so these two books are nice and strong board books to endure countless page-turnings by our two kiddos! i look forward to investing in more christmas books over the years as the kids grow. do you have any favorite christmas books that you remember as a child or that your family reads now? below, you can see ethan and caroline reading "the candy cane book" with nana. i think they read almost every book in the basket that night!


though i am keeping things simple this year, we have done some activities to build the kids' excitement for christmas, and it has worked! we have two advent "calendars" this year, though really, neither one is an actual calendar. this is the first year that we've done a"christmas countdown chain" in our house, and man, the kids have gotten into tearing off one chain every night. they even go to bed with the torn off chain! :) since we are teaching our children that the excitement of christmas is all about the arrival of baby Jesus, our christmas chain has a picture of baby Jesus at the top... every night that we tear off a chain, ethan and caroline see that we are getting closer and closer to the arrival of baby Jesus! they started fighting over who got to tear the chain off one night, so we decided that the red chains were for caroline to take off, and the green chains were for ethan to take off. well, tonite, ethan ran into his room and ran back out, exclaiming, "it's green tonite! it's green tonite!"

our other advent calendar is a magnetic nativity scene that we add to every morning. (i also found this last year after christmas and forgot about it until i opened that box!) it is a beautiful set based on the intricately designed fontanini nativity pieces. so far, we have a bunch of shepherds, some food and water for the animals, a tree, and one sheep. we're supposed to have two sheep out already, but one is apparently off with little bo peep's lost sheep. (i knew this would happen, but what fun are magnets if you're not allowed to play with them, right?!) anyway, i have all the pieces waiting to be used up high on the side of the fridge, so ethan is well aware of what is to come. he sees baby Jesus at the end of the line and all the exciting people to put up in between. and he cannot wait to put the star up. he has 5 days to go till the star, poor boy. he is so excited.


i really fall short as a mom in the craft area. i see tons of great ideas to do with my kids, and then i just don't do them. maybe that will be one of my goals for next year-- to be more crafty with my kids-- but for now, i just acknowledge the fact that i fail in the craft department!! so some of you (heather!!) may not even count this next project as a craft, but in our house, it qualifies! ha! i wanted ethan to really learn the words to some christmas carols this year, and i knew if he had pictures to help him, he'd catch on in no time. so i made up a little rebus for "away in a manger". i left blanks in the lyrics for words that would work well as pictures, and thanks to google images, i printed out little pictures to represent familiar words to ethan. (but i drew the "down" arrrows-- see, i told you i was crafty!!) one morning last week, he helped pick out which words went in which blanks, and he glued them on the page. by the time we finished the paper, we'd sung the song at least a dozen times right there. then i covered it in contact paper (key step!!!!) and hung it on the fridge. it has helped ethan learn the words to "away in a manger" so much faster, and it was fun to make, too!! even caroline will bring me the paper and say, "sing!" my goal was to do a new carol every week until christmas, but i may just shoot for doing one more before the big day. here is a picture of our completed CRAFT! :)


so these are some of the ways we are reliving the anticipation of the coming of Christ. over the last few days, i've been reading a lot about a jesse tree, and i cannot WAIT to do this next year with the kids. i'd love to hear of your family's christmas traditions or ways that your family celebrates advent. what a special time of year it is...

gobble gobble!

i hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving! we stayed in town and feasted at brian's parents' house with his brother and family. my mom & grandmother joined us, as well as brian's grandmother, and it was a wonderful, relaxing day. i didn't get very many pictures because my in-laws' recliner is oh-so-comfortable, but here is one of the kiddos at their little table...


i know it's past thanksgiving, but i wanted to share this quote from one of last week's pages on my elisabeth elliot daily calendar... (ashley, that's for you!!!)

accept, positively and actively, what is given. let thanksgiving be the habit of your life. such acceptance is not possible without a deep and abiding belief in the sovereign love of God. either He is in charge, or He is not. if He is in charge and loves us, then whatever is given is subject to His control and is meant ultimately for our joy.
oh boy, did i really need to hear that before last week hit!

the week of thanksgiving for our family could pretty much be summed up with one word: sickness. caroline had been fighting a cold since saturday, which i really thought was teething... but then tuesday morning, ethan woke up with our family's very first ear infection. poor guy. so i knew where the germs had come from: the bottom bunk! well, we can't say we haven't taught our daughter to share. brian's throat started hurting the same day, and by wednesday night, i was beginning to feel run down. everyone is better now except me. now i just can't shake this congestion, and i have not been able to smell or taste anything since sunday. (so guess who's been on dirty diaper duty!? ha! i really should clean out my fridge before my crazy-hyper-sense of smell returns!!) we had also scheduled to have the carpets cleaned in the middle of all this, so the night i started feeling bad, there was an area rug drying on my kitchen table, laundry coming out of every crevice in our house, sick kids needing mommy, and mommy needing to go crawl in bed!! when my mom and grandmother came over to help me get some laundry done, i said, "this is what the house is supposed to look like 5 days after the mother doesn't feel good... not when i have just gotten sick!"

this past weekend, i was really hoping to pick out our christmas tree and decorate it before december got here. since i was pretty pathetically sick all weekend, that didn't happen... but i was well enough to be really aggravated about it. (never mind that it also POURED RAIN all weekend, and we wouldn't have gone to get a tree anyway! i was still upset...) i was frustrated to be really "behind" from the kids being sick all week, etc. etc. etc, and i felt like i just couldn't truly "enjoy" thanksgiving weekend as i'd hoped. well, bah humbug to me! i finally came to my senses while blowing my nose in bed at some point and began thinking of all that i truly do have to be thankful for... even just about the past week. i'm thankful that ethan's ear infection only bothered him for three hours. i'm thankful that we weren't planning some big family thanksgiving trip, only to be traveling while we were all sick. i'm thankful that brian's mom sent some wonderful homemade soup over on friday night. i'm thankful that i was able to taste all the delicious food on turkey day before my sense of smell took a vacation. i'm thankful that our children are rarely sick, and i'm thankful that all of this sickness went down now vs. in 8 weeks with a newborn at our house! so anyway, i could go on and on, but you get the point. there is always something to be thankful for, and as elisabeth elliot said, we should seek for thanksgiving to be the habit of our life. i love that. as she also said, God is in control, and that is worthy of our utmost thanksgiving!

i will let caroline end this post... just in case you'd already forgotten what a turkey says.....



and now let the christmas festivities begin!!!

caroline's birthday party: what a zoo!

we did indeed have a "roaring good time" at caroline's birthday party a couple of weeks ago! caroline is so fascinated with animals these days, especially giraffes and elephants and lions (and tigers and bears! oh my!)... so i could think of no other way to celebrate our little monkey's birthday than with a zoo party! i turned to my trusty birthday party website to find more than enough fun ideas for a great evening. (my mom first found this site while searching for ideas for ethan's 2nd birthday cake, and i have depended on this site for birthday ideas ever since!) ok, back to the party... nana and pappy were so gracious to open their home for caroline's little shin-dig, and they just smiled as we hung animals all over the place!

my favorite decoration was the silly monkeys! kristie and another sweet friend of mine helped me create these goofy monkeys during a girls' craft night at heather's. i am SO GLAD they helped!!! this bay window in nana's dining room was the perfect spot for the monkeys to hang out. don't you just want to give them a banana?!


as our friends and family entered "the zoo", they walked through trees filled with snakes, and they also passed by the bird exhibit. near the feeding station, the animals had sabotaged the "please don't feed the animals" sign by crossing out "don't"! the feeding station was full of food that the animals like to eat (see a little further down for a closer look.). even the zookeepers had a snack. :) i found the fun colorful animal print balloons at oriental trading company... i was originally thinking about using traditional animal colors, like b&w for zebras, orange & black for tigers, etc... but i was so happy to find these for a GIRLY zoo party! of course, the package came with a ton of balloons, so we left the extras all over the floor for the crazy animals to play with!


here's a closer look at the feeding station. for those of you trying to figure out what the animals eat, i'll give you a little lesson on animal diets:
monkeys eat bananas, zebras eat hay, elephants eat peanuts, bears eat fish, zookeepers eat doritos :), giraffes eat trees, birds eat seeds, and lions & tigers eat... well, other animals!


caroline's cake was sweet and simple this year. we found all these cute ideas for monkey cupcakes, etc. etc., but i shocked my mom by asking her to just make a cake with some dots and told her we'd stick some animals on it! (miracles do happen!!) i thought it turned out great! and so did caroline. :) she loved looking at all the animals on her cake, and her friends loved helping her pick them off!


the grandmothers' wardrobes also added to the zoo decorations! here they are in their animal prints... beverly (our adopted mimi!) in leopard print, cindy as a black panther, gram wearing zebra print, and nana in snakeskin. :)


as caroline's friends arrived, they were told that the animals were loose all over the zoo and that we needed their help finding them! the kids had fun "catching" the animal stickers in their zookeeper bags...avery even figured out that some animals hide between rocks! :)


the kids would have been completely content running around the "zoo grounds" playing with striped and spotted balloons the whole night... but we had a couple more games to play! we played animal action, where the kids pretended to be different animals... this was a hoot, but i didn't factor in the reality that i couldn't crawl around on the floor very easily with the kids to show them what to do!! so heather came to my rescue and was a GREAT animal trainer!! :) can you guess what animals the kids are imitating below?!


the hit of the night (i think, anyway!) was the zebra parade!! the daddies didn't know what they were getting into when they showed up at this zoo party, but they were really good sports about being dressed up as zebras! each family was given a roll of toilet paper and black streamers to create a zebra, as well as zebra ears (yes, the grown men wore headbands!). it was hilarious watching everyone create these animals... i think the adults had more fun than the kids!


in the end, we ended up with some very unique looking zebras... jeff won the prize for "mummy zebra", and jonathan was "zebra most likely to one day be in charge of the zoo". aaron was decorated by his talented wife and the also very talented cindy, so he won "most artistic zebra". and brian...well, brian didn't get a prize. we decided that brian looked more like a zebra who'd been attacked by a wildebeest!

here are the good sports:
jonathan, brian, jeff (under there somewhere!), and aaron

caroline had fun opening her gifts...and eating them too! :) we gave caroline a little kitchen for her birthday (more on that later), so everybody gave caroline food and cookin' stuff! ethan was just as excited about it as the birthday girl! look at his expression on the edge of this first picture. :) then you can see caroline feasting on the cute felt food heather made for her! (in that picture, she's digging into a yummy soft hamburger with all the fixins!)



and now for the cake! caroline was talking about her cake all day... actually all week! she could not wait to blow these candles out!



caroline did not want to wait for plates and forks to start digging in to the icing! hmmm, i wonder where she gets that!?!?


"who loves cake?!" look at all those hands in the air!
caroline is saying "me!!" with her mouth full of cake. :)

i loved watching caroline eat her cake. she enjoyed every little bite!

we worked hard to get this family picture... notice i'm one wrestlin' move short of having ethan in a headlock! and notice the birthday girl still sneaking that icing! atta girl!


caroline shares a birthday week with sweet claire, who just turned one! last year, newborn claire's first outing was to caroline's first birthday party! i think caroline was trying to share the elephant with claire, but she ended up attacking her with it... sorry, claire!


well, the animals are all back in their cages, but it's still a zoo around here! :) we had so much fun celebrating caroline's birthday, and that is just the beginning of celebrations these days! we are looking forward to a wonderful thanksgiving feast with family tomorrow (and friday!) as we reflect on all that we have to be thankful for.

we sure are thankful for our little birthday girl! happy birthday, sweet caroline!