My Favorite Christmas Song

Back in high school my mom bought a Collin Raye CD. It was a Christmas album.  As mom played it that first year I fell in love with one of the songs on the CD.  I'm not sure why I love it so much considering it isn't a traditional Christmas song, but it has a very strong message.  When I went off to college I stole this CD from mom.  I had so me roommates that year who were less then considerate and managed to crack my CD when they threw it on the floor to put in their CD.  The CD still plays but skips on my favorite song.  Since them I've been meaning every year to buy to copies of this CD.  One for mom and one for me, but I keep forgetting.  My Christmas money is spent for this year, so hopefully I'll remember next year.

I think I've become more attached to this song with the passing of my Grandpa a few years back.  Grandpa didn't fight in WWI but he did fight in WWII.  Grandpa never said much about fighting in the war, but everytime I hear this song I think of grandpa.

As far as I know there is not an "official" music video for this song.  I found this rendition by a lady on YouTube and thought it would do.  I hope you enjoy the song and the message it shares.

All sent!

FINALLY all my Christmas cards and letters are sent.  I dropped off the last batch about 30 mins ago.  I also sent out an e-mail with them last night.  If I somehow I missed anyone {and I'm sure I did} will you

a.  Ask your spouse if they got the e-mail

b.  Just wait for your letter to arrive in snail mail if you are family

c.  If neither one applies above, leave your e-mail as a comment so I can send you the letter.

I'm quite pleased with the way my card turned out this year.  I used a great scrapbook kit called One More Sleep by my friend Amber.  She sells her stuff HERE if you like to check it out.  Also, another good friend took our picture.  I love how Allie is so excited in the picture!

First Day of Nursery

Allie turns 18 mo. next Sunday.  Since we are going to be traveling, I decided to send Allie into the nursery a week early.  I was bit nervous that she wouldn't stay because she is sooooo attatched to Russ and I.  She is very skeptical of people she hasn't been around much.  But my fears were in vain.  I asked her if she wanted to go to nursery and she nodded her head yes.  I let go of her hand and she ran in and started playing. I snuck out the door after explaining to the nursery leaders what was going on.

It was nice that I was able to take care of my primary duties without having to entertain Allie, and keep her from distracting the kids.  But a part of me missed her, and worried that she was upset.  Every cry that came from the nursery next door I listened to intently to see if it was her.  It never was....When church was over and she saw me, she came running into my arms.  I asked her if she had enjoyed nursery and I got enthusiastic nodding of the head. It is comforting to know that Allie will love nursery and be at ease in there as much as Lily was, but that she loves seeing her mommy and daddy afterwards.

Santa Clause comes to the apartments!

Every year I search out where there Santa will be appearing so I can take the girls to see him.  This year I was thrilled to find out that Santa would be visiting our apartments at the Christmas Party.  I was ecstatic until I found out that Russ would be in California for it.  How was I going to take the girls by myself to this AND get a decent picture of them without him there pulling silly faces.  I hemmed and hawed over whether to go or not, but in the end I did.

We walked down and started to eat our breakfast when Santa showed up.  This guy was amazing!  He really was jolly, had belly the jiggled, and his beard was just perfect!  Lily was amazing and jumped right onto his lap for a picture.

Allie cried as we got close to him.  Santa was amazing though and kept talking to her.  He gained some trust and she inched a little closer to receive her candy cane reindeer.  But when offering his hand for her to come take a picture with him.  The ladies over the office told me to go stand with her and they would take a picture.  I handed them my camera but they took one with theirs instead.  They said they would print one out for us and hand them out.  Okay, sounds good. 
ETA:  We never received the picture even after asking them repeatedly for it.  Soooo mad!

We finished up our breakfast and headed out the door.  Lily waved to Santa and said goodbye, which prompted Allie to shyly wave at him.  It was too cute!

We headed home and I snapped a few pictures of the girls with their Reindeers.  They love them so much.  Super glad that I sucked it up and went to the party by myself.

I wish I had my camera...

Today I heard the girls giggling in the backseat as I stopped at a stoplight.  I turned to see what was going on.  Lily was showing Allie something out the window and they were laughing.  But the real kicker?  They were holding hands.  It was one of the sweetest moments I've seen with these two.  I only wish I'd had my camera to capture it for forever.

Walking group!

Back in August I was asked by the Relief Society to start a walking group for our ward.  Doing what I knew was right I agreed even though I hated that I would be in charge of something.  So I made some fliers, passed them around in church, and made sure it was announced in all the auxiliaries.  The first week no one showed up.  The second week no one showed up, or so I thought.  Carolyn asked me in church if I was going walking.  I said yeah, but no one had shown up.  She let me know that she had shown up the previous week, just late.  So we discussed it and agreed on meeting the following day at the walking path.  Since then Carolyn and I have been walking most Mon, Wed, and Thurs. together.  It has been really enjoyable to get to her better.  Lily also gets exercise walking around, and at the end of the walk Allie and Nate get some exercise on the playground.  It is a win win for everyone!  We even occasionally have a few other sisters in the ward come walk with us.

It has been chillier her lately, so we decided to take our walking group indoors.  We've been meeting at the local mall to walk.  I sometimes get a good laugh out us walking there because most the other people walking are 80 years old.  I feel so old, lol!   I'm certainly lucky to have found such a great friend through something as simple as a walking group.  I guess it sure shows how inspired the general presidency was when they came out with the "groups" idea for Relief Society.

Christmas Cupcakes

Walking through Target's Christmas section the other day I chanced upon a Funfetti cake mix with Holiday colors.  I was in love as soon as I saw it.  I snatched it up with Lily wide eyed and asking, "Do we get to make those?"  I agreed but warned her they weren't for us.  I had plans to give them away to the ladies I visit taught and also for Russ to give them to the families he home teaches.

It took a few days but I finally got around to making them.  However, things didn't go as planned...

It started by Lily helping out with the batter while Allie sat in her chair eating her snack.  Lily really enjoys helping with things like this so I let her even though I would have proffered to zoom through by myself. Towards the end, Lily even snagged a picture of me finishing up the mixing of the batter.

We cooked the cupcakes and let them cool while I made up my mom's yummy frosting.  The frosting began and I remembered why I hate cupcakes.  I cannot for the life of me frost them in a nice pleasing manner.  Nope the frosting always comes out looking insanely uneven and it even has the appearance of looking nasty.  I thought maybe I could mask the nastiness with sprinkles.  Nope! That didn't work either since sprinkles wouldn't stick.  So I had to use my hand to make them stick, which in turn messed up what little smoothness I had achieved while putting the frosting on.  I guess we'll just have to eat the horrible looking but tasty cupcakes ourselves! Darn ; )

Light at the end of the tunnel..

I should be making our Christmas cards right now, so I can get them sent out.  But I'm not because I decided I've neglected this poor little blog too long.  It has been on my To Do list for awhile, but keeps getting shoved down the list.  Somethinig about "feed kids" and "get kids dressed" seems to rank higher on the To Do list than "blog about the last month"

I've been adding a few things from November, so you can peek at those if you want. But what I wanted to write about today was Russell's traveling schedule.  I know I talk about it a lot, but right now, our lives revolve around it.  Our time is spent discussing what day Daddy comes home from California and what day Daddy leaves for California.  People ask how I'm doing with Russ being gone, and I laugh and tell them that I get through one day at a time.  That mentality truly is the only thing that keeps me going sometimes.  Those days when you just want to sit and cry are the days I think to myself, "If I get through today, tomorrow WILL be better, and I'll be one more day closer to Russ being home" 

Don't think all days are doom and gloom like that, because they aren't.  The girls and I have a lot of good days.  Take today for example.  We went to walking group and I let the girls play at the mall playground, which is one of their favorite things to do.  Then we had fun doing some "Daddy Christmas Shopping".  After an equally productive afternoon we got a call to have dinner with a family in the ward.  That was a relief because I'd forgotten to get things ready for dinner earlier in the day.  Dinner was great.  We came home and the girls went to bed.  Awesome day in my book. :)  

So to get back to the point of this post...Russ is in California right now.  He'll be there until the 18th, which stinks because he'll miss my birthday.  What can you do though?  But he found out some GREAT news from his boss about his upcoming schedule.  First off after Russ gets back on the 18th he doesn't have to go to California for work until Jan. 25th!!!  I get him for a whole month!  The other good news is that Russ's boss in Texas told the boss in California that after March he wants the traveling to go down.  Probably to like one week a month.  I SOOOOOOOOO can handle that!  Things are looking up for our little family. 

Advent Calendar

Two years ago we got this advent calendar.  I can't remember if we got this from Leslie or Suzi.  It took a little work to put it all together.  All the styrafoam people were in pieces and needed glued together.  A few times I almost gave up on it.  At the time I just didn't have the patience for it.  But I persevered and finished it up.  Lily has fallen in love with it.  She loves seeing what piece she gets to put up.  Today was the camel.  Just look at the pure joy on her face.  Things like this really remind me what the Christmas season is all about.

Failed brownies....

Most of my Try-it-Tuesday recipes I try out on Saturday if it is a dinner, or on Monday if it is a dessert.  I decided since I had a little extra time today that I would make these brownies today instead of tomorrow.  In general it would make my day a lot less hectic.

I broke out the supplies and whipped them real quick.  Then I noticed I was supposed to have a mini muffin pan.  Shoot!  I had one but it only held 12 muffins.  That would take me forever to do!  Oh well, I bit the bullet and poured them in.  Now I didn't grease my pan because a) it ruins your pans and b) the lady who wrote this recipe said that you didn't need to.

I waited patiently for the timer to ding so I could have some of those ooey-gooey pepperminty brownies.  I pulled them out and knew something was wrong.  They looked crisp.  I waited a bit for them to cool, and started chiseling them out of the pan.  The bottoms were hopelessly stuck and the peppermint had burnt.  It was now a chalky, crumble in your mouth, slightly brown clump.  After getting a few out I gave up in frustration.  I looked at all the batter and decided to try again using a regular sized muffin tin.

Lets just say it was a repeat performance.  I guess everything I bake can't be a success.  I did look over at my "attempt" to get them out afterward though, and thought it would make a fun picture.  At least I know how to poke fun at my failures ;)

A New Do

I've been feeling that I need to have make a change in my life.  For some reason when I get feeling this way, the first thing I do is go and chop off my hair.  I have been growing up my hair since May 2007.  Since then I've only gotten one teeny-tiny trim by Stacy.  My hair tends to grow straight and stay healthy so trims aren't usually necessary.  Anyway, today I decided that I needed to change, and change I did.  This is the longest I've had my hair since high school when I was able to {almost} sit on it.

When I get these haircuts, I've always donated my hair to Locks of Love.  Today felt a little different when I asked for the address to send my 10" of hair to.  It tugged at my heart more, to know that I was helping a cancer patient. 

Sadly, the haircut didn't turn out perfectly.  Obviously the girl was inexperienced.  Before she put the layers in my hair I asked her if she would like me to part my hair.  She said "No, by having it parted down the middle all your layers will be even."  Stupid me believed her, because I don't know a thing about hair.  I got home and styled my hair, and quickly found out that she was wrong and I had been right.  With my hair parted on the side my layers are longer on the left and slope upwards to the right.  I don't think you can really tell in the photo though.

Even though things didn't turn out right, I'm glad I got my haircut.  I'm loving it in fact!  I can't wait to grow it out a little so that I can go get it fixed by a "professional".  Oh and what does the front look like?  Well, I didn't have time to curl it, but this is what it "somewhat" looks like.  In reality it flips outward on the bottom, and the layers higher up curl around my face.  It normally doesn't look all straggly.

Snow

It snowed yesterday.  Yup, good ol' Gulf Coast Texas received snow yesterday.  Russ and I were quite in shock that it was actually snowing.  We thought we wouldn't be dealing with snow anymore.  I guess nothing is for sure anymore.  It snowed on and off the whole day, however the ground was so warm that it didn't really stick.  It also was switching from snow to sleet quite often as well.  I got a good chuckle when I heard that because of this storm schools would be starting later in a lot of areas, in order to allow time for the "dangerous conditions." LOL!  The snow left me missing home quite a bit.

This morning Russ walked the garbage out to the dumpster and can back asking for the camera.  After disappearing for a few minutes he came back and said, "Post this on the blog for proof."  He didn't catch a picture of the snow, but something that would display that OCCASIONALLY we can get cold weather down here too.  He was a little miffed about having to break out the ice scrapper again. 

 

 And this picture just cracks me up.  If you look really closely you can see that the frost only extends as far as the shadow of the apartment does.  When walking over where the shadow ends you discover that the grass is just wet not frozen at all!

Texas weather {and people's reaction to weather} makes me laugh!

Blog Book: Feb 12 - June 30, 2008

I've been waiting forever to publish my first blog book.  So many things have kept me from getting it done:time, money, difficult software, moving, etc.  Blurb came out with an awesome sell recently that I knew I had to take advantage of or kick myself in the bum for a long time.  I kicked up he notch on my "editing" of my blog book, and I got it done in time to get the deal! 

Today I finally got my blog book!  I thought it would be delayed because of the snow, but UPS came through! The pictures I was able to take are horrible because we had no natural light coming into our apartment, but I couldn't wait to post this so here they are.

The cover

Double page full paragraph writing.

Double column writing

 Here I got creative.  I made my own layout for the left hand page.  I also loved doing full bleed pages.

More full bleed photo paired with text.

I learned how to do this layout by watching a tutorial on blurb.  It wasn't too difficult once I understood the concept.

And then one more full bleed page.  I really liked how I got these pictures to work out to be side by side.

Of course I love this book even with the flaws.  Yep there were flaws {my fault of course}, but it wouldn't be my book without them.  I always have a flaw on things I make.  Just to point out a few....the alphabet I used on the cover was of low quality and was fuzzy bits on the edges instead of crisp clean lines like it was supposed to have.  On the screen that wasn't visible, but when enlarged on the book it was all too evident.  Speaking of the cover, I wrote the wrong beginning date of the book.  For some reason Valentine's day was on my mind instead of Feb 12 when I wrote it.  There were a few typos through out the book that I didn't catch.  But that is it! 

I'm so excited about this and have already started the rest of 2008.  A few things I learned/regretted about my book....

1. I wish I had done a full year instead of half.  I had been worried in the beginning that my full year wouldn't fit in the 400 page limit that blurb puts on their books.  That would have been in vain because half a year was well under 200 pages.
2. Use more full bleeds, and picture only pages.  Again I was worried about size, so I tried to cram everything together without being too crowded.  Things worked out okay, but I would have preferred to see more white space in it.
3. Make more of my own layouts.  Blurb has a bunch of great templates that makes the editing process go so fast.  However, I found myself making quite a few of my own because I felt they were more eye pleasing than the ones blurb provided. This time around I'm checking out how to make pdf's and use them instead of using the blurb templates.
4. Make sure ALL pictures have been edited.  Don't trust your blog to have your perfect pictures that you want in your book.  Unfortunately I didn't realize that my pictures hadn't been edited until after I printed the book, so some of my pictures turned out a little dark.  That could have been fixed if I had been paying attention to what I had put on my blog.
5. Definitely splurge on the premium paper. I got the premium paper and you can totally tell that it is high quality paper.  It is thick and stiff.  Not flimsy at all.  Russ commented on how high quality it is.
6. Definitely get the picture wrapped hardbound book.  This made for such a nice professional looking book.

I know I had more things, but I can't remember them.  So if anyone is interested in making your own blog book head over to: http://www.blurb.com/ Also feel free to ask me if you have questions about making your own blog book.  I don't profess to be all-knowing about this, but I might be able to answer some questions.

Where's Allie

Allie loves her cupboard "house".  She has gone from just sitting in the cupboard, to playing in the cupboard, to now hiding in the cupboard.  Many times if I can't find Allie, I'll look in her "house" and there she will be waiting to see peek-a-boo.  We got her on video doing this, luckily this day we knew ahead of time where she was.

Going Postal!

Mailing presents. I have always heard about how horrible it is to mail packages at Christmas time.  For heaven's sake my dad and sister work for the post office. I've heard ALL the horror stories.  I've avoided the Post Office like the plague at Christmas time in past years.  But this year it was inevitable that I mail packages to my family.  I would love to claim that I'm "on top of the ball", but truthfully when I went walking yesterday a good friend reminded me that things were starting to get out of hand at the Post Office.  I immediately forgot that I needed to wrap when I got home.  Today however I drove by the post office and saw that the parking lot was full and it all clicked in my head.  So tonight I asked Lily to help me wrap presents so I can mail them tomorrow.  Just look how excited she was that I was letting her help me.

Christmas Wreath Craft

If you can't tell by now, I LOVE crafts.  It really doesn't matter what kind of craft it is, I'll usually try my hand at it.  As Russ decorated for me this year, I realized that I only had one Christmas decoration that I had actually made.  That Christmas decoration was made when I was 12!!!  I began to get bummed out be this until I remembered that I had saw a Christmas wreath that I had wanted to try and make.

Even though I still haven't been feeling 100%, and probably shouldn't have gone to the store without Russ, I was DYING to buy the Christmas bulbs I needed to make my wreath come to life.  That fact led me to only go to one store, where I was disappointed that they didn't have the color of bulbs I wanted {silver}  So I settled for some pretty green, red, and white bulbs.  Later that night, I conned Russ into holding the wire for me while I meticulously threaded all my bulbs on it.  It was a little tricky and took a couple small "do-overs", but I was pleased with the finished product.

I ended up hanging this on our bedroom door mainly because I was too lazy to go back to the store and get a metal door hanger.  The plastic one we have makes it difficult to close doors.  I plan making more of these next year when we are in a house.  I thought a silver one would look beautiful hanging above a mantel.  Call me a dreamer, but I hope I have that mantel next year!

I saw the tutorial for this on another blog, but I'm not going to give the link.  The tutorial that the person wrote up was TERRIBLE! If anyone wants directions on how to make this, leave a comment and I'll post them on here.