Heading South

The day after Christmas we packed up the car and started our road trip to Florida.  We enjoyed unseasonably warm temperatures.  Our first stop was the St. Basilica is St. Louis.  It was absolutely beautiful!  It reminds me of the cathedrals in Spain.

 I loved the nativity and the Christmas decorations inside of the Basilica.  Our final stop of the evening was in Nashville.  We drove around the State Capital and then enjoyed dinner in German-town.  Monell's is a family-style restaurant where you sit around large tables with other people and you pass around the food as you would with your family.  Their motto is "Enter as strangers.  Leave as friends."  We sat with a family from Albany, Georgia who was visiting family in Nashville for the holidays.  It was a lot of fun and it was also good Southern comfort food.

I don't have any pictures of day 2 in the car, because it was long and rather painful.  We hit really ugly traffic in Atlanta that added 3 hours to our travel time.  We canceled our sightseeing plans in favor of just trying to get out of the city.  We experienced heavy traffic all through Florida as well, so we were thrilled when we finally arrived late that night.  

Baby Girl Finish

The baby is due in a week, so I was grateful I squeaked in this finish before the new year.  My friend is having her fourth girl!  That's a lot of girl power in that house!  This is a quilt made completely out of my quilting stash and scraps.  Wahoo!

Growing Up

BB was excited to lose another tooth.  He, however, lost it, but he wrote a very nice note to the Tooth Fairy.  I'm not sure why he thought he was getting a toy since the Tooth Fairy has never been quite that generous, but I suppose it never hurts to ask.

He's also decided he now wants spiky hair.  He calls it his Mohawk.  He's been growing the top out for a couple of months.  Several nights in a row, he's come downstairs to show off his hair when he was supposed to be sleeping.  He goes into the bathroom and gels his hair.  I keep telling him that's what you do in the morning to get ready for the day and not at night, but it hasn't quite registered with him yet.

 Little Guy also has own special style.  He doesn't like to wear matching shoes.  I later realized that he has also been mismatching his socks.  The interesting thing is that they're not interchangeable.  He's been matching specific socks with individual shoes.  

School Catch Up

Before the break the 5th graders made graham cracker gingerbread houses with the kindergartners.  Little Man said he enjoyed himself.  He was kind, and shared his creation with his siblings.

Little Lady's class has been reading Out of My Mind.  I really loved that book, so I was excited for Little Lady to read it in school.  It's pretty deep, so I was impressed that a 3rd grade class would be reading it. 

A Christmas Miracle

In the Summer of 2011 I started one of my first quilt-a-longs.  It was Christmas blocks.  It was my very first time trying paper piecing and applique and several other techniques.  It took 2 years to put the blocks all together and then another couple of years before I finally put on the border.  I had a completed quilt top by the time we moved from Ohio, but it sat untouched for another year.  I finally layered it and started working on the quilting, but it was slow going, because I was trying to do intricate quilting in each of the blocks.  I lost steam and didn't touch it again for another 2 years.  I'm always so busy during the holiday season and it felt weird working on a Christmas quilt in January, so kept sitting there.

Every year my husband always jokes about how wonderful it is to have a Christmas quilt...he'd look around and start laughing, because we both knew there was no Christmas quilt downstairs.  It was in my Work-In-Progress bin.  This December I pulled it out and took a good look at it.  I decided that I was just going to bind it and finish it, because it was never going to get finished if I quilted every single block with something intricate.  The entire thing was already outlined, so I didn't need to do anymore quilting for it to be OK. 

I ran into a snag when I didn't have enough fabric to bind it, but I ordered some more fabric and got to work.  I finished it on Christmas Eve!!  It's a Christmas miracle! 

 Since it's my husband who thought I would never actually finish it, it felt appropriate that he would be the first to use it while we watched the newest Grinch movie.

It got lots of use right away, and it makes it all worth it...almost.  I'm just grateful it's FINALLY done!  Eight and a half years later we have a Christmas quilt!

Merry Christmas!

All of the kiddos had problems sleeping last night.  In Little Guy's defense he fell right asleep, but Little Lady and BB woke him up with their excitement.  It was then that he had a hard time going back to sleep.  He was very concerned that Santa wouldn't be able to come, because everyone was still awake.  Even Little Man couldn't fall asleep.  It made for a late night for Mommy and Daddy.  Little Lady and Little Man were both up at 6:15.  Little Guy joined them at 6:50, and they finally woke BB up at 7am. 

This year we switched things up a bit and gifted the kiddos an experience instead of presents, so Christmas morning was stockings and a gift from Santa.  They proclaimed it was the best Christmas ever and they haven't even gone to SeaWorld yet.  I personally loved the gifts the kiddos made for us.




Little Lady's one huge desire was a Kindle like her older brother.  I thought she was going to pass out she was so happy.

There have been a lot of Mickey hugs this morning, and Little Man may be my favorite nerd ever.  He squealed when he opened his 3 encyclopedias!



BB was so excited to get his favorite super hero: Black Panther!  His face makes me laugh, because his surprise caused a look of stupor.  It took him a few seconds to process his gift. 

 We rounded out the morning with our traditional Christmas breakfast.  A very Merry Christmas to all of our family and friends!

Christmas Eve Magic

Christmas is magical when you have young children.  Everything is exciting. 

We spent the morning decorating cookies for Santa and playing with Blocos.  Little Man LOVED Blocos when he was younger.  Joel brought them out this morning and they were a hit with all of them.  Even Little Man was excited to make some creatures, too. 

 This is the face of a boy who doesn't want to share his cookies.

We watched Grinch in the afternoon and they kept looking at santatracker.google.com to see Santa's progress around the world.  They checked it all day long to see what country he was in and how many gifts he had given out.  After dinner we had our yearly family devotional after they opened their Christmas pajamas. 

 For the devotional Little Man played an arrangement of Joy to the World on the piano.  Little Lady read to us A Charlie Brown's Christmas.  BB wanted us to sing along as he played Up on the Housetop, and then Little Guy just had to have us sing along with his Jingle Bells.  We sang some more around the piano and then read the Christmas story together. 

 Our family game this year is Sushi Go Party!  The kids were skeptical at first but they ended up liking it by the last round once they got the hang of it. 

BB made sure Santa's cookies were labeled and put right next to the fireplace before he went to sleep.  (PS- could he look any more like a young Joel in this picture?!  I can't get over how much he looks like his dad).

Gingerbread Dates

This month Little Man asked if he could go out to breakfast with Daddy and then make a gingerbread house at home.  They decided to wait until after the rest of the kids were put to bed, and then he stayed up with Dad to make a gingerbread house.

Little Lady wanted to go out to breakfast and then decorate a gingerbread house at Taste Buds Kitchen.  We had a girl's morning out.

Since all of the other kids had made a gingerbread house at some point this season, Little Guy got to put together a gingerbread house with Daddy. 

He's done with his house, he's got on his snow boots and backpack, and now he's ready to conquer the holidays!