My little guy was watching Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D he looked so cute in his glasses, had to take a pic.

My Daughter cracks me up

The love for a child is indescribable and to have a child is such an awesome blessing. I have never been as mad at anyone or laughed as hard with anyone as I have with my daughter. She can make me more angry with her at times then I can possibly imagine. I'm not talking anything anybody has to worry about here, just typical Mother/daughter stuff, I'm sure Mom's know what I'm talking about. She and I have laughed together a lot, but more so lately. Over the Christmas break we watched a chic flick together and then she played around with her new camera she got for Christmas. It has some video capabilities and we were both being so silly. She said it was like she had a friend sleeping over, we had so much fun. We laughed so hard about the craziest things. Yesterday we went out shopping the two of us in the store were being so silly, another customer in the store got a chuckle out of us too. I laughed so hard, my face was all scrunched up and she said I sounded like a mouse squeaking, it almost hurt! In school she is known this school year for her giggling. I said she gets it from me, so true. The simplest things will tickle our funny bones. I have learned to control myself though a little better than she can :) I am finding that she can be quite a comedian. She can make funny voices and faces that just crack me up. In fact she has recorded some of it, I am encouraging her to find a visual of the voices she's doing. We have so much fun together, and then of course the opposite too.... Thank God for the good times! She is such a cool teenager!

Did Christmas just come and go? Missing the colors?

My daughter was very sad when my husband took our Christmas tree down the other day. She said our living room looks plain now, without all the color of our tree... I do feel like Christmas time wasn't around long enough this year. It seemed to come and go so quickly. Can anyone else relate to me on this?

We were able to put our tree up just after Thanksgiving, which is a rarity for us. We have gotten many real trees in the past, and in the Arizona weather you can't keep them for a whole month. Last year we bought our tree with the lights already on it, time and money saver. In the future the kids still want to get a real tree from time to time though, they love the smell. Here's a picture of our living room now, we usually have the coffee table under the window. I was so excited when we bought our house to have a front window to put our Christmas tree in! Growing up we always had it that way, I guess that's why I wanted it.

Our family loves color, we've been in this house for a year and a half, soon to be two years and haven't painted the walls much yet. The ceilings in some spots though are around 30 ft. big undertaking but we know we want to do it sometime soon. It's funny because the previous owners had lots of color, some still remains but not in the big spots like the living room, dining room. We already painted the family room just before moving in because that is a room with a 7-8 ft. ceiling. How I know this? My daughter and I checked out our house about 6 months before buying it when there was an open house. In order to sell quicker they must have thought they needed to paint the prime rooms white. They did leave lots of paint behind which is nice for us. I know curtains or draped fabric and maybe some wood blinds will make a big difference in this room, one thing at a time... We were thankful to get all this window covering with the house.

Fresh & Easy deals of the day for me

My husband was going to be making another batch of his yummy chili today. I went to one of my favorite stores, Fresh and Easy to get the meat that he needed and a few other items. WOW I was surprised to find these deals! I needed some creamer for my coffee, I love flavored creamer, that is all I use in my coffee. They had these creamers marked down to 75 cents each! They don't expire until March, so I bought 3 of them, 2 pumpkin spice and a peppermint mocha. I know I like the pumpkin, haven't ever tried the peppermint mocha though, thus why I only bought 1. Normally they go for around $2.99 or so each. It was a seasonal markdown, but I don't mind these flavors all year. We also needed a gallon of milk, $1.35! Normally around $2.69 there, the expiration date isn't until the 7th. The way my little guy drinks milk, no problem with that date. Just had to share, I know really interesting stuff right, I love finding deals....

That little lady you see in the picture, I actually found her at a thrift store awhile back. I have, somewhere, a book from my childhood it's like the Old Mother Hubbard story, not sure of the title. I don't think it's called that though. I have to find that book, anyways, this little lady looks just like the one in the book! My daughter agrees with me on this, I have read her the story many times in her childhood. You know how the images in our mind can be, we'll see how correct I am. A box of my old childhood books are in the garage. Very soon we are going to get a bookshelf just for all the stories we have to put them in one place, but we haven't done that yet, so some books are still put away. I'll have to do a post to compare the image in the book and the little lady when I come across it.

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Merry Christmas!

On Christmas eve we went to our Church for a unique Christmas Eve service. There were two narrators one told of the Biblical Christmas story while our Pastor told of practical present day stories. In between the band played Beatles songs relating to the stories. The kids went to a Jingle Jam suited for them it was a play and game show and songs. Afterwards we came home for dinner and a quiet night. We watched the Little Drummer boy and Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol. I hadn't seen either in years, I was having childhood flashbacks! It was weird, I remembered some things that caught my attention as a little girl, it was all brought back. I hope to watch some other Christmas stories today or tonight. Every year I say I want to watch it's a Wonderful Life and in all my years I have never seen all of it. Unless I watched it as a child and don't remember? I will attempt to watch it again this year. I would also like to see the Nativity Story that came out last year.

Christmas at our house began at 7:45 AM. The kids were excited and wanted to get up, they went downstairs but didn't wake us up. We were actually awake and in bed wondering when they were going to get up :) The timing was good for all of us!

Grandpa (my father-in-law) came over about 1/4 of the way into our festivities of opening presents. It's always sweet to see what the children choose to give as gifts. My daughter gave me a beautiful cross with an amethyst in the center. She also made me an awesome accordion book at school and it says I Love Mom and has Fabulous in rhinestones on the front, she did a great job and was very proud of herself. My son gave me some sweet silver earrings he was excited about giving to me. He also claims that the humming bird feeder that was labeled from our dog Liberty to me was actually from him :) Afterwards we enjoyed coffee and cinnamon rolls and had a relaxing morning.

We don't really push Santa, but teach the kids about having Christ as the main focus and reason for our Christmas, He is the reason for the season. However kids will be kids, the kids pick up on Santa all on their own and of course the media and advertisements.... The other day my son said he needed to sit on Santa's lap and tell him that he'd like a Laboratory for Christmas. He has never sat on Santa's lap, never had the desire to. It was too cute to hear how he was going to tell Santa about the Laboratory and how it would have a secret code of 55555, apparently this would be in his room. We let him watch Dexter's Laboratory and this is what we get for it :) Well the lines at the mall were to long, he didn't sit on Santa's lap, but he hasn't brought it up again. He's happy and is having a Merry Christmas.

Later today my Father-in-law will join us again and my Mom and we'll have Christmas dinner together. Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Remembering that Jesus is THE reason for the season.

Gingerbread Ornaments....

Our Church had a Christmas boutique recently, every year it's a place to go to find cool handmade treasures. I found these cute ornaments there. We enjoy painting the plaster type ornaments and we've made a our own ornaments over the years. I couldn't pass these up though, they are made out of the cinnamon dough and were hand painted, it looks as if they have a light coating of sparkle glue on them, it smells like they were sprayed with a protective coating?(they needed some airing out). The peanut shell one was cute also. My daughter gave the peanut shell reindeer to her Math teacher. We gave a gingerbread to her English teacher both are special teachers. The others I gave to ladies I work on the playground with. Since we kept none for ourselves I had to take a picture of them. Maybe we will try something like this ourselves in the future.

Our dog Liberty is such a sweetheart! She let me put this santa hat on and snap some pictures. She's the best :) I love going into our living room and enjoying the peace and our beautiful tree at night with the lights lit.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

This is our wedding picture in a ornament on our Christmas tree. The quality of this picture isn't that great because I took it with my phone. I do love the way the lights turned out in this pic.


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The Family Dollhouse

My son and I went to Hobby Lobby recently. I LOVE that store!!!!! We were looking around and when we came to the Dollhouses he said he wanted one. I know boys typically don't have them, not wanting to squelch his desires though, I listened to him and humored him. I think we can share this as a family. I think he mainly likes the idea of the miniatures that go in it. I thought what a fun "family" project that would be, there would be building involved and decorating it could be a long term project. We could work on it room by room.

As a little girl I had a dollhouse and I loved playing with it. I can remember that my Mom would make little miniature books for it, she loves to read.... My great Uncle was retired and he would make the furniture from kits for me. I still have some of it somewhere. A friend of mine had her grandmother's dollhouse and I remember it was beautiful. I can remember thinking it was more beautiful than mine at the time, each room was decorated all perfectly in antique furniture.

My daughter and I have a book of how to make miniatures, it's very cool to look at. We haven't done much with it because we haven't had a place to put the miniatures into. This is a picture of the dollhouse that the two of us thought was pretty cool.