slippers and sweats day

Got a phone call at 5:30 this morning - yep, no school for the boys again today. Seems there was a little freezing rain that visited us while we were sleeping the night away. Blessed that it wasn't enough to cause a lot of problems and that we got a day to stay in our slippers and sweats today! Even got the playdoh out and fashioned a Spiderman, Incredible Hulk and some odd looking animals. The rest of the day was reading, laundry, work for me, playing MarioKart on the Wii (Rosalina and I are becoming fast friends), football helmet shaped sandwiches, a drive-thru at McD's, baths and bedtime. Loved it!

a photo a day

I've decided to do a new project this year with scrapbooking. It's called Project 365. The concept is not new, but the talented Becky Higgins came out with a kit to make it oh so easy to do (they went on sale yesterday and I feel incredibly blessed to actually have gotten one cause they sold out in just a few hours and the website kept crashing, etc. - lots of angry scrapbookers - can you imagine?!)

It involves taking a picture a day for a year. The idea is that you collect snippets of your real everyday life and document them a week at a time. I've already started taking pictures last Sunday, and I have to say it's made me think about getting the camera out more already.

It also goes along with my "simplify my life" resolution cause all of the page protectors are divided for the 4x6 photos and journaling already - I don't even have to get out scissors or adhesive - just a pen to write the journaling. Aaaahhhh. I love doing full layouts, but I love that I'm going to capture the whole year in this easy way. It's easy and it gives me time to catch up on all the layouts I haven't finished from last year (and the year before that).

Anyway, here's one of the pictures from this week:

Brian got an iPhone for Christmas and I haven't seen him without it for more than 10-15 minutes ever since. I didn't realize that they were so cool, but he's always coming to show me a new application he's found or telling me about something new he's figured out about it. I love how excited he is!

Simplify

This is my one and only resolution for myself (which will definitely benefit my family). These past couple of weeks of not having to run around everywhere or fulfill all of my responsibilities outside of my home and family have made me realize just how complicated and busy our lives have become. It's inevitable to be busy in our lives, but it's definitely time for me to re-evaluate and simplify as much as I can. I was talking to Amber about this, and she was telling me that she remembered someone once mentioning that an acronym for busy is Being Under Satan's Yoke. Ouch!

I saw a book in my MOPS leader magazine called "Little House on the Freeway" and the description said it was about how "hurried" families can slow down and simplify. Of course I was too cheap to actually buy it and checked it out from the library instead. What I didn't notice was that the library copy was written in 1987 - my first clue was a reference to the upcoming 21st century on the first page and the real "aha" moment came when the author was talking about a man who had to have every new gadget, including a cellular car phone! Yeah, I'll be getting the revised edition tomorrow. I'm still reading it cause it so struck a cord with me about wanting to slow down.

Anyway, hope everyone else has at least one resolution for the new year (I think the retailers are hoping so, too!)

Off to a great start

This was the scene that Brian and I walked into as we said goodbye to our neighbors and walked upstairs to see if the boys were still awake at 12:45 am on January 1st. Elliott, of course, was still going strong on the Wii, but Ethan just couldn't take it any longer. I decided to re-implement quiet time for everyone the following afternoon when Ethan still woke me up just a few hours later at 7:30 wanting breakfast. There were tears (for everyone - except Brian who was fortunate enough to avoid the afternoon meltdown by attending his work party) at first, but after a few minutes we were all happily snoozing. I love lazy afternoons!

Air conditioning in December??

The temperature is dropping and the wind is howling outside as I write this (becoming a very familiar sound around here), but this morning and afternoon were a totally different story. Not only did we not need coats to go run our errands today, but the boys kept complaining that they were hot! We even had to turn on the air in the van to keep the whining to a minimum.

The poor boys were forced to run errands with me ALL DAY today, so their treat was getting to eat out at Chick-fil-A (or Chick-ta-lay, as they call it), play at the play place and trade their toys in for ice cream (which we ate outside!). Gotta love Chick-fil-A and the fact that one of the only freestanding ones in the metro area is only about 10-15 minutes from our house and on the way to the mall.

(excuse the food in Ethan's mouth - he was very excited about the Chick-ta-lay)

Let the Games Begin

We love playing board games and so do Barry and Vicki so we jumped at the chance last night when they came over and all the boys decided to play upstairs after dinner. We're so glad they are here so close to us. I met Vicki the first day of grad school in Tennessee of all places! Now we live in the same county, and they've been such a blessing in our lives since that day. Their two boys are adorable (you've seen them in some other posts), and our boys love them! We definitely need to get together more often.

And the game....the boys won this one (it came to an abrupt end when the boys tired of playing upstairs). There will be many games in our future this season - I'm can guarantee a game of Cranium will be played at my parents' house and probably Catch Phrase on New Year's Eve. Yes!

Christmas Eve

Well, the kids are tucked into bed (on the air mattress in Elliott's room as they preferred tonight) and we've finished with our Christmas Eve festivities. Beautiful candlelight service at church, pizza, decorating Santa's cookies for his snack tonight, hot chocolate by the fire and opening the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th boxes of the interactive nativity set we bought this week. Now it's time for these elves to get to bed. Merry Christmas!!!