Christmas Festivities:

We were unable to go to Michigan this year for Christmas (much of Daniel's family lives there) because Daniel didn't get enough time off work.  He only got Saturday through Tuesday and since we typically drive, 2 days are spent traveling there and back. (About 13 hours in the car one way.) It was nice to celebrate and enjoy my family's typical traditions that they do here, but I really did miss getting away.  Looking at the calendar prior to Christmas weekend, I was feeling a little overwhelmed and like we had overextended ourselves.  It's so easy to get caught up in all the festivities, and subsequently not truly be able to worship and celebrate.  Here's what our weekend looked like.....

Friday December 23rd

 Praise God that my Brother-In-Law is home safely from Iraq!  We were so excited to have him back on this side of the pond, AND home to celebrate Christmas!  Friday night was spent at my in-laws celebrating his return.  While he was in Iraq, he missed his birthday and Thanksgiving so we had a Thanksgiving dinner re-do with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato pie... And I baked him a birthday cake.  Of course we also had to celebrate Christmas in there, so Leeland and his little cousin got to open all of their Christmas presents.  My in-laws left the next morning for Michigan which is why the babies got to open their gifts a bit early.

Saturday, December 24th

Christmas Eve morning we had another couple over that is friends of ours for breakfast.  They of course brought Leeland a gift-- cute little track suit pictured below.  And they even got Daniel and I a little something which was unexpected and super sweet of them.  I made breakfast, I made this breakfast casserole and this french toast recipe.  Both of them SUPER easy, I prepped both ahead Friday night and baked them in the oven that morning. 

Saturday evening we went to church.  The Christmas Eve service was PACKED!  It was such a sweet service though, with what seemed like lots of extra singing which was totally fine by me-- the band at church is always wonderful and singing Christmas carols with a packed house is just magical.  After the service, we went to my Granny's house for some yummy food and for Leeland to yet again open some more Christmas presents.  

After my Granny's house we were headed home to play Santa, or just simply put the gifts that had been wrapped and hidden in our room for several weeks now under the tree.  

Sunday, December 25th-- CHRISTMAS!

Christmas morning we woke up and got Leeland up to open gifts.  We had a minor issue with my fancy camera and all of our Christmas morning photos had to be taken on my iPhone.  I was quite bummed!  We left the camera out in the car on accident the night before-- when Daniel walked the dog, he brought it in.  It was pretty chilly out that morning and when he brought it in the lens got all fogged up.  I wiped and wiped and it kept fogging, it took about an hour to "defrost" and of course Leeland was not waiting to open his presents. 

After we opened up our gifts and our stockings, it was time to head to my parents house.  Their tradition is a big Christmas morning breakfast-- bacon, sausage, biscuits, gravy, pancakes, eggs.... MMMM, I'm starting to drool just thinking about it. And of course there was more presents.


Once we were done there, we were free to celebrate as a family.  We came home and took naps with new PJ's on and then got up and had some dinner.  And cake.  Our new tradition this year is a "Happy birthday Jesus" cake-- an excellent way to teach the boys a bit more about the meaning of Christmas. 

And that my friends is our Christmas in a nut shell with some photos.  The past 2 days since Christmas have been all about family time (taking advantage of Daniel's time off work), cleaning, organizing and trying to figure out what to do with all these presents!  Our little man really racked up and got far more than he could ever need or want.... kind of makes me nervous about next year with 2.  Hope you and your families had a great Christmas!

Santa

We took Leeland to see Santa this past weekend. Let me remind you of how it went last year when he sat with Santa for the first time at about 8 months old....

Leeland would be on the left in the above picture with my sleeping nephew on the right, who never flinched at any of Leeland's screams might I add and enjoyed his little nap with Santa.

And here is this year-- he still didn't care for Santa much this year, though it was the wailing of last year....

Just a little bit of whining this year. :)

Celebrating Advent

 Tis the season to begin celebrating Christmas and not have stones cast at you.  Kidding, but for real, I have lots of friends who are very anti-anything Christmas before Thanksgiving.  This past week at MOPS (Mothers of Pre-Schoolers) we had a guest speaker Jen who came to speak about traditions.  She was specifically speaking about the importance of traditions in the family year round but she also mentioned several of her family's Christmas and Holiday traditions. 

 One of the traditions that she spoke about was the "Jesse Tree," which is essentially a Christmas tree where there is a new ornament placed on the tree everyday of the season and there is scripture that goes with it.  The scriptures take you and your family from the beginning with creation to the birth of Jesus. I grew up in a family that only went to church on Easter and Christmas and this was something that I had never heard of and immediately knew that I would like it.  The concept of keeping the season so focused on what truly matters and the anticipation of the celebration of Christ on Christmas day.  I knew that we needed to start this tradition and we needed to start it this year-- let me remind you that Tuesday was November 29th and the advent season typically starts on December 1st.

Thankfully she also shared that Ann Voskamp has free Jesse Tree printables on her blog.  If you haven't heard of Ann Voskamp, she is a fabulous author and her most recent book "One Thousand Gifts" climbed to the top of the charts.   You can find her blog/website here. Once you subscribe to the blog, you can get access to the free printables for the Jesse Tree.  The printables include picture cut outs that you can use as ornaments and also devotions and scripture to go with each day.  I cut out the ornaments and attached them to some scrapbook paper and added a ribbon to hang them on the tree.  Most people use a separate small tree for their Jesse Tree but due to it being last minute and not entirely in the budget, we're just adding the ornaments to our regular Christmas tree.  It really works out for us too considering I limited the ornaments on our tree this year since the ones we have are glass and I didn't want them in tiny hands. 

It is going really well so far!  At almost 20 months old, Leeland is still a little young to completely understand but he truly does love to read and hear stories and he loves the Christmas tree.  We sit and read the devotions before bedtime and then he and Daddy add the ornament to the tree together.  I think it will be so much fun to see how he comprehends and gets more and more into it each year.  I know that it is going to be a precious time that we look forward to each Christmas season. 

A special thank you to Jen for sharing about the Jesse Tree and also to Ann Voskamp for the awesome devotions and printables!

Lastly for this season, just for Daniel and I-- our yearly tradition is a candy advent calendar.  This calendar I got at Starbucks a few years ago and I buy candy to refill the drawers each year.

Hope you all are enjoying advent as much as we are!

Some crafty gifts...

So I had all these intentions of posting blogs about all the crafts I made for people for Christmas.... then we lost internet connection for a good 3 weeks, and now I'm a little overwhelmed playing catch up. SO, with that said, here are some of the gifts that

I made and hopefully I didn't miss much ;D

First for the children in my family, I made canvas bags with their name or monogram on it. We have several new babies in our family, so I figured they could be used to carry baby things or as a "spend the night with grandma bag." I also made one for my niece and thought she would probably carry it as a purse or books in it to school.

I also did some crocheting. I made hats for many of the babies in my life, and also a blanket for Leeland.

Rachel and her flower hat, Hopelyn wearing a bunny hat and Leeland with a penguin hat :D

Hooded birdy blanket

I printed photos from my dear friend Alisa's family photo shoot of us for my parents & grandparents and also for Daniel's parents & grandparents.  And I made a necklace for Daniel's grandma that I unfortunately didn't get a picture of... It was a blue pearl necklace with blue ribbon roses.  

Christmas with the Kroh's

We didn't intend for Christmas to be a major event, yes it was Leeland's first Christmas but we didn't want to blow it out of the water or spoil him too much.... And we didn't have to! Our family spoiled him pretty hard core. We spent Christmas away in Michigan with Daniel's extended family so we opened our presents as a family and celebrated with my family before we left. We opened presents here at home on the 16th. Daniel and I were working with a small budget, so we just exchanged a few things, and got Leeland a couple toys and a toy box. I also made Leeland a few things-- a blanket and a bag with his monogram.

We went to my parents house on the 18th and exchanged gifts there. My family draws names, which is really nice so that we don't have to spend too much money and everyone gets something. As adults, it's not really about the presents anyways. Of course the children don't draw names and boy do they get spoiled! We had no idea that Leeland would get so much!

Daniel's parents came over on the 20th to give Leeland his gifts. They went to Michigan too, but didn't really care to travel with ALL the presents they got him. Leeland RACKED UP! Most of the toys that Leeland got for Christmas won't even fit in the toy box that Daniel and I got him. For the past 9 months, I have been storing away a lot of baby items thinking that we will keep them for the next child if we are blessed to have more, there is NO way I am going to be able to keep all of this stuff! We truly are blessed with a loving family!

First Family Christmas Card

Meeting Santa

Friday night Daniel and I took Leeland to meet Santa for the first time.  We met my sister and my nephew Tyler there.  Tyler is only 1 month old and was asleep when we got there-- we thought he might wake up once placed and Santa's lap and he didn't.  We took some pictures of Tyler and Santa first and then we put Leeland on Santa's lap to get some photos of the two of them together.  Then we snapped a few pictures as quick as we could of Leeland by himself with Santa.  We had to be fast because Leeland DID NOT like Santa AT ALL!!! He screamed!! And Tyler slept through the whole thing... Here are some pictures....

Sneak Peek for blog readers.

My blog readers can get a sneak peek of our family photo shoot that we had last weekend with my dear friend Alisa.  You guys are seeing the pictures before they go on facebook and before the Christmas card goes out.  I love them and I hope you enjoy them as well! :D

Those are a few of my favorites! There's over 100, but I don't wanna fill up my whole blog with one photo shoot! 

Crafts as promised

I promised my readers in an earlier blog that I would show you all the crafty goodness that I have been making... the unfortunate thing is that most of them are Christmas presents so I can't show you until after I have given them away.  Here is a holiday wreath that I made for my Mom and gave to her on Thanksgiving.  (More to come soon as the gifts are given away)

bad picture taken from my phone, and hanging on a random nail at our apt

Crafty Christmas

I have always enjoyed art and creating.  I haven't always been very good at it and still don't consider myself all that great, but I try.  As time has passed, I find myself with more and more time on my hands-- kind of hard to believe since I now have a husband and a kid, but it's true.  Throughout High School I worked various part-time jobs after school and on the weekends.  Throughout college I worked a part-time (almost 40 hours but not quite) job to support myself.  If I had free time during these years it was spent doing homework, cleaning my room, being with my family, my (at the time) boyfriend... now husband.  And then my senior year of college was even MORE crazy! I was working at Starbucks, I had an internship, classes, planned a wedding, got married.  I remember when I finished college just thinking "Now what? All I have to do is work? That's gonna be a breeze!"  And it really was a breeze, I suddenly had all this free time on my hands to read the books that I wanted to read and wasn't assigned to read, to do laundry, to go out with my husband or my friends.... Then I found out I was pregnant and I got laid off.  Yes being an at home mom is A LOT of work-- I would argue that it is a lot harder than most people think it is.  But I feel so free! I feel like being a Mom is what I was made to do.  I am very organized, I multi-task like no other.... and when the baby naps, I can sit down to a good book, pick up my yarn and crochet hook, plug in my hot glue gun-- whatever I want to do!

With all of that said, I have found myself doing all kinds of crafts lately! It has been so much fun! My love language is gift giving as it is, but putting the time and energy into all of these creations has made me so much more anxious and excited for Christmas!  (And there's also the benefit that crafting is less expensive and our income has significantly dropped) I would love to tell you what I have been making and such, but that would be at the risk of revealing too much to my family and friends I have crafted for. I look forward to writing a blog and posting pictures of all that I have made.  Until then, I leave you in anticipation! :D

Crafty folks??

If you like to do all kinds of neat crafts and decorations, you should check out my friend Anna's blog.  I have found great inspiration there this holiday season :D The link is below....

Blissful Whimsy

Rebels do it before....

Those who know me well know that it is a complete understatement to say that I LOVE Christmas!! It's hard to say exactly what I love about Christmas because I love all parts-- celebrating the birth of my Savior, glitter and glam of the decor, giving gifts, receiving gifts, standing under the mistletoe,  eggnog, cuddling to keep warm when it's cold outside, getting lots of mail (IE Christmas cards)..... I could go on forever.  Usually around the beginning of November I start to get overly anxious-- there are shopping deals to be found and the stores are already filled with spirit and decorations.  Many people are anti-Christmas before Thanksgiving, but each year I find that I just can't contain myself.... and it seems each year I put up the decorations earlier and earlier.  This year is especially fun because we have Leeland to share the holidays with.  This is his very first Christmas and I have planned to go all out, and so that he gets the full effect, I have already put all of my decorations up WAY earlier.  They were all up last night as a matter of fact (November 15th). Here's a glimpse of the holidays at our apartment--

Our balcony in lights

This was our wedding cake topper, turned into an ornament--just add ribbon :D

By the way, I should add that Leeland is truly mesmerized by the lights! He LOVES them!