Christmas Day

Max was upstairs and enjoying the presents Santa brought before most of us were up. He got a toolbox full of tools from Santa, along with an army playset with a helicopter, some transportation DVD's, some books, a sleeping bag from Grandma Nancy, along with several other toys. (Of course what he really wanted to play with was Ellie's race track!) He is one spoiled/lucky little boy. His favorite toy of all, though, was the cargo airplane he got from Grandma and Grandpa. It's got it all, combining both his love of anything transportation and toys that can hold other toys. Plus it makes noise! Emily got blocks and some books and other little toys, along with her blanket and some clothes. To be honest, she didn't seem to interested in opening presents, just playing with the wrapping paper and ribbons! ;)

We spent most of the day at my moms so that we could spend time with Seth and Jessica who drove through the night to get there in time for Christmas. We took off around 4:30 to make the almost 2 hour drive up to Jeff's parents. We made great time, getting to our house about ten minutes earlier than usual. We stopped for a very quick unload of presents before heading up to Jeff's parents. The roads and weather were great until just after we passed Brigham City and then it got horrible. They were sure getting dumped on up north! We were glad that Meghan had called to warn us of the weather since her and Jay were making the same journey up to his parent's house and were about thirty minutes ahead of us. It took us an extra half hour to make the rest of the journey and it was pretty slow going with a lot of white nuckling done by me. We were very glad when we pulled into their driveway and excited to see all of Jeff's family, although not so excited to see Matt and Sherry take off shortly after we got there to head down south. Aparently the storm followed them and they had a rough and slow time the entire trip, but made it home okay. We were very glad we were spending the night, along with Curtis and Alese who got snowed in because the road over to Cache Valley had been closed. We had a great time playing and eating lots of yummy food! We woke up the next morning to a beautiful snow covered world and I was sad that we didn't have snow clothes so that we could go out and play in the foot of fresh snow. It was a great Christmas and we loved being able to spend so much time with our wonderful family and having several days after to spend time together before Jeff had to head back to work!

Christmas Eve

Holiday soup, singing around the piano, opening your one gift, playing games, and of course, watching "Christmas Eve on Sesame Street". The only down side was that I spent the night like this:

Ward Christmas Breakfast

Here we are at the Ward Christmas breakfast the Saturday before the big event. Instead of Santa coming to visit we got the Grinch in his Santa costume. I'm not quite sure how I feel about this. We were actually pretty surprised we were able to get Max to go sit on his lap, even if he was one of the very last kids to go up. Next year I'll have to make sure he gets to meet Santa Claus.

My Favorite Place

I was cleaning up my craft area today and decided I would finally do that post that I've been thinking about doing for the past 6 months or so. Now, like I said, I was cleaning today. This area of our house is NOT usually this clean, plus I left some stuff I'm working on out of the pictures and pulled the ironing board that seems to have taken up permanent residence in this area out of the way.

I'm sure you already know that I love to sew, scrapbook, stamp, quilt, and basically make things. When Jeff and I bought our house I was really hoping that we would be able to get a four bedroom house so I would have some room for my stuff, at least for a few years, but the minute I heard "Cape Cod style" and saw the pictures of our house I knew this was the house I wanted even though it only had three bedrooms and needed a lot of TLC. There are many things I love about my house, but one of these things is how big our Master bedroom is. Since I knew that I wouldn't be able to have my own room for my craft stuff, Jeff and I decided that I could have one of the walls/corners of our bedroom. (Yes, I painted our bedroom purple, and No, Jeff does not have a problem with it.)

Last fall I watched my neighbor Aimee's baby (and his older brother after school) twice a week during one of her graduate classes. Jeff and I decided that the money I earned was my special "fun money" that I could do whatever I wanted with and pretty much all of the money went into this space except for a small portion that bought me some new maternity clothes. I called it my Charlie money. I bought myself my own serger, which I had been wanting for years. I bought my shelves and baskets and a Cuttlebug machine along with a bunch of dies and embossing folders. And I bought my beautiful desk that I LOVE! I just have to say that I had been eyeing this desk for months but it was way out of my price range ($400's, on sale). Because of some unusual circumstances I was able to get it for $200. With limited space I really needed to maximize the area, so I added the shelves and the baskets to hold my stamps, ink, and extra ribbon and I just love how easy it is for me to find and use my stuff now. Much better than the dig through my piles of stuff on the floor method I was using before.

I did a similar layout with my sewing area with shelves and baskets over my sewing machine for all of my sewing supplies, patterns, and scrap fabric. So nice, especially with little kids because most of my stuff is way up out of their reach. I'm planning on adding an inspiration board to the wall next to the sewing machine and maybe some little wall quilts or vinyl lettering. Someday. Right now I just love having my own little area. It's so nice to have a place to do the things that I love doing. I think every mom should have a little area all her own to do the things that she loves.



On a related note: After I bought my desk, Jeff was a little sad that he didn't have a space of his own. I offered him joint custody of my desk, but him being the super nice, thoughtful person that he is told me I should have a space that was just mine. Instead of sharing my desk we bought Jeff this beaut off KSL for about $30. One of these days I'm going to paint it when he's not looking. We figure that in a few years it might make a good school desk for the kids. So now we both have a little wall in our room that is all our own. And since we also have our computer in our bedroom we have three desks in here. I tell ya, our room is stylin'!!

Cutting down our Christmas tree

I already posted about us cutting down our tree, but I didn't have any pictures because both my rechargeable batteries and my back up batteries to my camera died on Thanksgiving day. My sister was nice enough to take some pictures for us and send them to me. Thanks Erin!! Why are kids so cute when they are all bundled up? (Please ignore my crazy/scary bangs!)

Christmas Crafts, part 1

I obviously can't post some of the Christmas presents I've been working on, but Emily doesn't keep up on the family blog so I think I'm okay to post this one. I love the flannel section at Joanne's and when I saw this yellow, flowery fabric I just had to have it. I really wish I could girl up Emily's "gender neutral" bedroom, but since it is the most done room in the house and we have so many other projects I want to do it just doesn't make sense to redo it, so this is a little bit of a compromise. I got to make a girly quilt and use the Christmas money to do it! The white squares are a really soft minky fabric that I just love. Emily's really into soft things so I think she'll really like her snuggly little quilt. Oh, and I found out that I could do free motion quilting with my sewing machine and it is so fun! (Although I'm not very good at it!)