Birthday's

On December 11th it happens to be Three of my friends birthdays.

So we had a fun celebrating that day!

Karis had one.

Lindsey had one. (i found that out later - but still wanted to give her the bday shout out :))

And sweet Alex had one!

she turned 26 - so now she is in the "late twenties" - poor thing she is so old :)

we had brunch at bread winners for her bday.

could have been a disaster with four young kids at an uptown location on a saturday morning, but it happened to be great!

they somehow worked it out for us to get to have a room all to ourselves.

yes the place is a bar at night - but it worked great for us during the day!

jason & alex

such a beautiful couple - you should look at the pics marybeth took of them on her tumblir site here

pretty awesome if i say so myself

i think they should be models.

and marybeth does an amazing job with her pics.

sweet emery kate

the girls

blake, jordan, and duncan

(duncan was still a little sick

fyi fact - the day before he went down for a nap at 3 pm and did not wake up until 7 am the next morning - yes he really did that)

inside the bar/resturant

jayden and ek sitting on top of the pool table

campbell was there too, but here is her afterwards

sweetie pie

happy birthday alex, karis, and lindsey -

i am thankful for all of you and hope you had great birthdays!

Advent #2

We have been doing another advent this Christmas as well.

I found this idea from my friend kelly's blog. (thanks kelly!)

I downloaded the template for the cards here.

What you do is put a fun activity on each of the cards. It can range from small things - (like reading christmas books, eating candy canes together, singing christmas carols) to larger ones - (like going to see the trains at north park, making your teacher's christmas cards, or going to look at christmas lights).

The great thing about it is that you can make the cards applicable to what you like to do and you can put them on the schedule on days that would work well for you.

This is what all our cards look liked together:

i bought the template from alli edwards site

i printed it out, glued christmas paper to the back, wrote fun things for us to do each day,

laminated them and then put the cards in our calender pockets

my sister amy and i made up our own little advent calendar

it is in the shape of a christmas tree and we stitched numbers onto each pocket and then attached it to the tree with a button-hole stitch

(no sewing machine necessary - except for the monogramming one that magen used to put our name on top of the tree;))

i love it!

it is such a fun thing to do each day and really puts us in the christmas spirit

jayden loves picking the card each day and finding out what our activity is.

i am also realizing it is good for helping him to recognize his numbers!

i like that we have two different advents -

one for the real reason for Christmas

and the other to help us have fun and make this season more special

i also made a lot of the cards focused on doing this for others.

i want our kids to learn from an early age that it is much better to give than receive!

this is a great way/time to teach them about it!

hope you are having a good advent season!

happy sunday night!

ADVENT!

I am so excited about what we are doing for Advent this year.

(actually it is our first year to do it, so when i say "this year" it is not because we have done it before - just to clarify :))

My friend Dana told me about this book, so I got it.

It is great!

It has a devotional for each day (one for kids and one for adults) and you make a corresponding ornament for each day of the devotional.

campbell has nothing to do with the advent but i just thought it wouldn't be a good post without at least one pic of my kids :)

precious sweet little thing. she went with jordan and i to boston this past weekend. so sweet and wonderful. i will post about that later :)

I was a little overwhelmed at first about making ornaments for each day. But thankfully my friend magen was doing the same thing - so we partnered together, stayed up WAY too late one sunday night - and got all the ornaments done.

it worked out perfect - she designed the ornaments and i copied her :)

here is the finished product:

here is a picture of the book:

the book takes you from creation to christ and each day helps prepare and explain what christmas is all about

a couple of my favorite ones:

a few of my least favorite ones:

(if you are wondering what the one is that looks like a whale - it is a sling shot and five stones - some were kind of hard to make!)

i got a separate tree to put the ornaments on.

it is so fun for jayden because each day he gets to unwrap the ornament, read the devotional and then place the ornament on the tree.

hope you are having a good christmas season so far!

another advent calender that we are doing coming up next . . .

Thankful

yes.

thankful.

we have so much to be thankful for.

let us be a people who are full of gratitude to God for who He is, what He has done for us, and His abundant provision and faithfulness.

we had a wonderful thanksgiving weekend.

unfortunately i worked on thanksgiving day. so i missed out on the big meal at my sister's house. (her and my other sister mb did a great job. you can look at her post here!)

my parents came up on wednesday night and i had everyone over for dinner.

i made pioneer women's lasagna and sheet cake. DELICIOUS!

i am slightly obsessed with pw.

mary b set the table.

she made it look beautiful, as usual.

(its nice to have an artist live with you :))

love those sweet boys.

we got d's haircut last weekend.

we took pictures during it - but not an after shot. sad :(

it looks good (even though jordan said he liked it better before the cut - i just can't handle the very long, messy hair)

sweet al and jason

i don't have any pictures from thanksgiving day.

you probably wouldn't want to see them anyway.

plus it would be a hippa violation :)

(those of you in healthcare know what i am talking about!)

on friday my dad took just me to breakfast at einsteins.

so sweet of him and a wonderful time to connect with just us.

he took each of us girls for some one on one time.

what a thoughtful and purposeful dad.

we went to chuy's for lunch.

i decided that this would be a good tradition for any time we have thanksgiving in dallas.

we did it last time everyone was here - so i decided that now the tradition is born.

i have a bunch of pics from chuys - b/c i didn't get any on thanksgiving day.

enjoy!

nice pic jason

Shutterfly!

As many of you know, I LOVE christmas cards. It is always one of my most favorite things to do during the Christmas holiday. (i love getting them as well :)). I have always made my Christmas cards and enjoyed the process of doing it, but this year I am making a change! I L-O-V-E all of the amazing designs that shutterfly has with their new Christmas collection. You can see it here.

I decided that I don't quite have the time I formerly did to individually make each card - so when I found their new designs and the new stationary cards that they come on - it was a wonderful discovery! I used shutterfly for Campbell's birth announcement and it turned out great - so it should hopefully be as great of an experience this time. You can see the options for birth announcements here.

I have also made a photo book with shutterfly before and it turned out precious. It was SUPER easy to make, turned out great, and came to my home fast! I probably will be making another one of those soon too! Here is where you make the books.

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f you have a blog and want 50 free holiday cards from Shutterfly, Click here to go to Shutterfly for information on how you can get 50 free cards this holiday season, and make sure to select Clever 1000 as the referral source.

Happy Thursday

Cooking with Mommy

Jayden and I have been doing a lot of cooking together lately.

It is a fun activity for us to do while the little ones nap in the morning.

(and it helps me get any baking done that is needed for the day!)

Last week Jayden and I made pumpkin bread.

Yummy!

This recipe is so good and so easy to make.

It is great because it makes either 2 large loaves or 4+ mini loaves.

Here is my little helper ready to go!

cracking the eggs, one of his favorite activities!

(don't worry - i shovel out any accidental shell pieces that get put in b/c of the aggressive cracking!)

mixing the flour and spices together

are you liking jayden's nice smile!

he use to not look at the camera, and now you get a good cheesy smile when he does - oh well it is better than the opposite i guess :)

jayden's favorite part - licking the paddle after we are done

he is even learning how to help mommy clean afterwards

pumpkin bread cooking

the finished product!

we wrapped up two and brought them to jayden's teachers.

i think it was really fun for him to tell his teachers that HE had made the bread for them.

what a great way to give some fall love to others :)

you can find the recipe here.

enjoy!