2011

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I hope everyone has a wonderful year! 

Finished T-Shirts

Blogger is being dumb and my formatting is not great, but here are pictures of the kids' finished t-shirts that they painted.  The boys had help from Aunt Angela.



Kyra's finished Fairy T-Shirt













Megan's Princess T-shirt











Jacob's Tractor T-shirt





E is for Elmo and Ethan T-shirt



T-shirt design

My mom thought it would be fun for the kids to paint their own t-shirts.  We found shirts for the girls that had a preprinted design and couldn't find anything for the boys but blank black t-shirt.  So the girls set out to paint their fairies and princesses and the boys came up ideas that my sister Angela drew on and painted.  So, with the fairies and princesses we added Elmo and a tractor from the movie Cars.  Here's a couple of "during the making of" shots:

I'll post pictures of the finished products later....boy, TONS of fun!

You better watch out...

I'm told that when I was Ethan's age (2-3) I sang this song all of the time! (Yes the Jackson 5 version!  hahaha, no, not really)  I LOVE it to this day!  Not because Santa is coming, but for a whole new reason.  It gets my kids to stop fighting and help out more.  Last year I had to resort to having my aunt play Santa and send some coal and a letter to the kids to warn them.  I probably should have done that again this year too, but I got lazy and I didn't like cleaning pieces of coal out of their sock drawers. (yes, they've kept them.)

This year Jon and I decided it was going to be a small Christmas out of necessity.  I had heard a lady in church say that they didn't want to go crazy with their kids' gifts and so they decided that becasue Christ recieved 3 gifts, that's all they would give their kids.  I've heard of different versions on what to give, but I just liked the simple "3 is enough" version.  Santa can do what he likes, but I'm tapped at 3.  Because of this new "tradition", we have been able to pay cash for everything this year.  I was so excited!  We won't have to worry about trying to recover in January. 

I love this season. People generally are nicer towards eachother.  You hear "thank you" and "here, let me get that for you" all over the place.  I love hearing the shock in the reply's after standing in the cold and holding a door for someone with their arms full.  They see my kids waiting patiently while I hold the door and often times say that it wasn't necessary, but I know if I was in their shoes I'd want someone to hold the door for me. 

Service is one of those gifts that keeps on giving.  A smile, a wave, holding a door, etc. are all inexpensive gifts that we can give to help buoy one another.  When we are serving others, we are serving God.  What better gift can we give Him who has given us everything? 

So, NO crying and NO pouting!  Just smiles and hellos and love!

Merry Christmas!