Christmas 2012

Hey friends!  I hope you all had a wonderful, calm, relaxing, exciting, and love-filled Christmas!

Things were pretty low-key here, and I am actually really thankful for that!

Even though there was a smidgen of hope that we may have a little snow for Christmas, that was quickly thwarted by all of the severe thunderstorms and tornado WARNINGS in our state.  Everyone spent the entire day watching the weather and changing plans.  We were home by 4:00 pm, hunkered down, waiting for the bad weather to arrive.

We were extremely blessed that we didn't get anything but a ton of rain and wind here, but several people weren't so lucky.  Thoughts and prayers for all of those who did suffer damage/injuries in the storms!

Anyway, on to the fun!

Christmas eve, the kids and I decided to try our hands at our first ever gingerbread houses.  Well, none of us actually like gingerbread, so we used graham crackers instead.  We made a HUGE mess, had a fight with the icing and piping bag, but had a blast!  Chelsea and I worked on ours together (was scared we wouldn't have enough icing to make 3 houses after I lost a fight with the piping bag) and Jameson did his all on his own.  I think they ended up really cute.  Next year, we will be better prepared!

Jameson's on the left, Chelsea's on the right)

They were so proud of their creations!

I purposely didn't post pictures of the kitchen.  It was horrible.  LOL

Since Chelsea got her "big" gift two weeks earlier, Jameson got his big gift too.  It's a pellet/BB gun, not a real automatic weapon.  (I was going to post it earlier, but with the horrific school shooting on that same day, I really didn't think it was appropriate.)  He is excited that he can actually pop a balloon with this gun!

 

I gave Chelsea this shirt I made for her on Christmas eve.  She loved it.

Scotty's autograph

Here is what everything looked like right after Santa came! Ahhhh, the calm before the storm! 

You see my mantle?  Yeah, that's all the decorating I managed to get done this year.  No banners, no garlands/balls hanging from the lights, no little trees up.  Nothing.  And you know what, Christmas still came and was successful without all the decorations!

Chelsea opening the one thing she asked for.  A blonde, curly-haired, Cabbage Patch doll.

Lauren Alaina autographed picture.

Sweets playing with some of her toys that Santa left for her.  Jameson was so sweet.  He was SO worried that Santa would forget Sweets.  He was very excited to see that she got gifts too, and he made sure to "help" her open all of her things before he even touched his presents!

Lauren Alaina t-shirt.

It's a watch!

Best face of the morning!

Lisa Leonard necklace "Just like mommy's!"

A tent!

Real, hunting-legal bow.  He totally wasn't expecting this.  He is excited to learn how to use it.

Alabama hat.

Sweets being tortured by Jameson.  She hates anything on her head, but she was a good sport about it.

We went out to Marty's mother's house, and I totally forgot to get my camera out of the car.  It was POURING rain and I was just trying to get the gifts and food in the door without ruining them.  I did get this picture of the tree AFTER 90% of the gifts were opened!

Marty was able to get his baby-fix in with Easton.  He is a DOLL!

Weather-wise, it definitely wasn't the Christmas we were hoping for, but we had a wonderful day full of family and fun...and really, isn't that what it's all about?

I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the week!!

Merry Christmas!

Thank you all so much for sticking around and reading our itty-bitty blog!  You all mean the world to us and our lives are better since "meeting" all of you!  We hope you have the most incredible Christmas ever!!!

 And remember, Jesus is the reason for ALL seasons, not just this one!  :)

It's the busiest time of year!

Hey friends!  I hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season, so far!

I am still around...peeking in here and there, whenever I can.  Things have been incredibly busy around here. This time last week, I had more than FIFTY items to make for customers.  I was stressing out in a major kind of way!  However, I buckled down and as of Sunday night, I only have THREE shirts left to finish!  The vinyl is cut, I'm just waiting on the shirts to get here so I can press them.  My poor machine has steam coming off of it!  HAHA! 

I wanted to post pictures of all of them, but I realized most of them are for Christmas gifts, so I can't show them yet! ;)  Here are a few that I can share, however:

And here is a little something I did for myself:

I'm not quite finished with him, yet.  I'm still thinking about how I want the finished product to look.

**phew**

It makes me tired just looking at these....and this isn't even a quarter of my finished projects!

So my friends, if I'm not around a lot before Christmas, you know what I'm doing!

I hope you all have a wonderful Monday!

It's {sort-of} looking like Christmas around here.

Hey friends!  I hope you are all doing great!

Just like every year, I always have intentions of having all my Christmas decor up and finished the weekend after Thanksgiving.  

Have I ever completed that task?

Nope, not even once!

Most of the time, especially since we've been in this house, I still have all of the boxes and unfinished decor sitting all over the place on December 24th.  I finally get frustrated and move it all out before Santa comes.  I don't want Santa to think I'm a hoarder or something.

This year has started off the same way as most years.  Everything has been out of the attic since the Friday after Thanksgiving, and still sitting around the living room.  Thankfully, my wonderful husband took pity on me and actually put up the tree, fluffed it, and completely decorated it!  This weekend, he put all the trees up on the front porch, too!

MY HERO!

We still have a long way to go, but at least it's {sort-of} looking like Christmas around here!

There are reasons I don't get into the Holiday spirit like I once did, but that's another post for another day.  So for now, here are some pictures!

 

Thanks to a certain feline member of our family, the decorations have had to be a little different this year.  All our ornaments are plastic or not easily breakable.   The first night the tree was up, Sweets decided to get into a fight with one of the balls, and within seconds almost had the tree on the floor!  Needless to say, we've had to do some rigging to make the tree safer:

It may not be attractive, but it works.

And here is the start of the outside decorations.  We have 5 small trees up, but these are the only one's that are lit.  I still have to decorate them, but that will come after my work-week is over.

You may notice the Alabama wreath still on the door.  Well, I made the mistake of taking that wreath down ONCE and we LOST that weekend, so Marty and Jameson told me that I couldn't take it down again until after the National Championship game in January.  Oh well, at least it's a gorgeous wreath.  LOL

Hopefully the Christmas {decorating} spirit will find me soon and the rest of this place will be finished!

And in the mean time....THIS is what my living room really looks like:

I hope you all have a wonderful and fantastic week!

It was a gift card Christmas!

Thanks to all our very special family members!

I think we will go use some today!

I hope you all are having a wonderful, stress-free week!!!

The LONGEST Christmas weekend ever (part 3)!

To read Part 1, click HERE

To read Part 2, click HERE

Marty and I got up, for the second time, and got ready for church.  Both of the kids were still going strong from their 2:37 AM wake up time.  They surprisingly got ready without any problems (well, I guess since they already had SIX hours to play with their stuff, it wasn't hard for them to get ready) and headed to church.

After services, we ran back home to finish a few things, and then headed out to my mother-in-law's house to spend Christmas with Marty's family.  As always, we had a fabulous, loud, and exciting time!  Here are just some of the 100-or-so pictures I took.

Marty's mom (left), and Marty's sister's mother-in-law (did you get that? lol), Mrs. Gilmer (right).  Mrs. Gilmer is facing some pretty serious health problems/treatments over the next few months, so if you could please keep her in your prayers, we would appreciate it!

My beautiful mother-in-law, Barbara.

My sister-in-law, Penny, mil, and sister-in-law, Tammie.

My sister-in-law, Candie, Tammie, mil, and niece, Shelby

My niece, Julie, mil, niece's Sierra, Lauren, and Natalie.

Penny feeding baby Reed.  (I love Candie laughing in the background)

Just some of the presents!  The baby carrier is blocking the majority of them. My sister-in-law, Connie to the right.

Shelby holding Reed.

My niece, Mallory, also holding Reed.

All the kids (and adults) impatiently waiting to open gifts.

Cleaning up with the world's largest garbage bag!  LOL

We all had a great time, but by about 5:00 pm, Marty and I were whooped!  We packed everything up, including a giant tub of Lego's that my nephew Taylor gave to Jameson as a surprise, and headed home to hopefully go to bed!

The kids got really quiet on the way home, so we hoped they were asleep.

NOPE!

When we got home, they were WIDE awake and ready to play with all of their things!

Marty and I tried to encourage them to go to bed "so they could wake up refreshed and play all day long with their things". 

Nope, didn't work.

At this point, we had all been awake for about 19 hours (with only two hours of sleep for the adults prior to the 19 hour marathon).  How in the world were the kids still going strong?

Well, about 9:00, I had enough.  I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer, and I abandoned the rest of the family and went to bed.  Besides, I was the only one who had to actually get up for work the next day.

I have no idea what time the kids actually went to sleep, but I will guess that they were getting close to being awake for a full 24 hours.

When I left for work the next morning, everyone else was SOUND asleep....as in, I had to check and make sure they were still breathing....sound asleep.  (Am I the only mom that does that?)  

I will say this was an incredible Christmas.  Everyone was happy, HEALTHY (which is a first in many, many years), and was relatively stress free.

I can't wait to do it all again next year!

I hope you all are having a fantastic week and I can't wait to see what 2012 has in store for us all!!