We'll be home for Christmas

It is so incredibly great that we have made it a priority to stay home for Christmas. This has been a tradition that we have started and hopefully will continue. We spent the day in our matching pjs and got to make a mess in the house! Sounds like a ton of fun. She was very excited to see that the cookies and milk were all finished and was equally thrilled that Santa left behind a cookie! Lauren got many great gifts from Santa, his reindeer and even one from Frosty the snow man! They included lots of books, puzzles and a very fun pizza set. From us she got clothes. Randy and I once again received presents before the big day. It never fails. He surprised me with tickets to go see "Wicked" and he got an iPod. We enjoyed the day breaking in all of Laurens toys, eating and relaxing.
Merry Christmas everyone!

Silent Night

'twas the night before Christmas when all through the house. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. This is Laurens favorite book right now as it has two of her favorite things in it. Ho ho ho - aka Santa and deer - aka reindeer. We read this book every night to her. You would think that she would get sick of it but she really does request it as we let her pick out her books to read before going off to sleep.
Christmas Eve for us was very nice. Randy arrived home early (thank you humana!) and then we were off to mass. We came home had a yummy dinner and then started to make a plate full of little snacks for Santa and a letter. Lauren was very excited about this. She totally got that Santa was coming tonight and was happy that we were leaving him something. I am not sure that she was able to get any sleep tonight because of all the excitement!

Some homemade goodness!

I finally got around to finishing all of my projects for Christmas. Thank goodness that we picked names on Randy's side of the family. I would still be sewing I thing. This year I picked my mom's name for Christmas on my side. I spent some money on things that she wanted on her list but also made her something that I knew she would enjoy. A new coat. It was so much fun to make that I think that I need to make myself one! And it didn't take that long either.

For the little babes on my side I made them little fabric balls. There is one that makes a sound, one with little tags of ribbon on it (lauren loved to suck on those) and one for just throwing around when that time comes. Again so easy and fun to make!
They also got some SUPER cute booties. I am addicted to making them as they are SUPER DUPER easy to make.

I also am letting Baby Talia borrow a bonnet from when I was a baby. But I added some little yo-yos so that they can match a set of mittens I also gave for her to borrow. So sweet!

Saucy!

To go along with everything homemade (or practically) for the holidays...my efforts must have worn off on my husband. He has decided to make everyone of his team members some must have goodies for their kitchen. His gifts included some of his creole seasoning (um why didn't he make enough to replenish our jar?), some sweet and spicy bbq sauce and some of his mustard bbq sauce. How lucky are his team members. Now the news will get out and maybe Randy will be able to fill his last position at work! Coming up next week are some more great ways that Randy will be celebrating Christmas at work...thanks to Mike his boss!

mmm.....me love cookies--yum yum!

Nice and cozy!

Today all the girls in my family got together for some serious cookie making. Allison and Brooklyn were already here (they spent a good part of the week with us!). So we braved the roads since we had gotten alot of snow overnight and went grocery shopping. They checkout lady must have thought that we were baking for an army. We had purchased about 7 - 5lb. sacks of flour because we needed 32 cups of it for our baking. Later we figured out that we really over estimated it by like 4 bags! big opps! We had so much fun baking. We ended up with six different kinds of goodies. peanut butter kisses, sugar cutouts, spritz cookies, ginger snaps, andes candies cookies (mmm delicious-think girl scout thin mints) and chocolate dipped pretzel rods. Wow we actually were baking for a day and a half! Our efforts paid off and the rewards were delicious!

Welcome Talia Jade!

On Monday, December 8th my brother Chris and his wife Wendy were blessed with a little tiny girl. Talia Jade is such a precious little baby with tons of hair. So sweet. We were able to visit them within a half hour of her coming into the world. Wow! What a great experience to have everyone from their families there.
On that Wednesday they were definitely ready to leave the hospital. They had to come here so that they could pick up Lauren's old infant car seat for my brother's truck. What a great idea to have two seats! No more hassel with switching them! We were able to sneak some more pictures of that little joy and all of her hair!

Stocking Surprises!

Since Thanksgiving, Lauren has had a fascination with Santa and St. Nick...to them they are the same! So she was really surprised when she came down to find some unusual thing peeping out of her stocking. She kind of looked puzzled when we brought her stocking down for her. Once she started to pull out the limbs from the sock and Randy started to show her how they went on, she started to get it! Santa Potato Head was a big hit. Ho ho ho! Randy got some yummy treats too! He got some sweet Kisses (the Hershey kind!) and some coffee beans from Luna. I must have been a bad girl 'cuz I didn't get anything!

Oh Christmas Tree Oh Christmas Tree!

This past Saturday we woke up ran our errands for decorating the house inside and out. Our first stop. Can you guess? Target! We picked up two more sets of red bells for the front of our house. Then off to Menards to see if we could find lighted balls for the windows. We found them! Yeah. But when we got them home they were not what I expected. ERRRR! And then last but not least we picked up our Charlie Brown Christmas tree! Lauren had fun playing on this little tractor that was outside and we found the most non perfect tree there! Then while Randy was tying the tree to the truck Lauren and I went into this little shop that was there to just browse. Well we ended up buying something too. An early Christmas present for me and the house. A coat stand...is that what they are called...not sure. Since we really don't have a coat closet by our front door, I thought that it would be a great piece for when we have guests who wear coats...winter is here now...brrr! We had alot of fun decorating because of all the possibilities of things to decorate! Right up my alley! I am going to be relying more on the end of season sales so that I can prepare to decorated more next year!