Christmas is over and we're all still mourning it a little bit, I guess. We spend so much time preparing our hearts and our homes and then it's over in a flash! We do everything we can to infuse magic into the days leading up to Christmas and give our girls as many happy memories as we can possible fit in. I know every mother has their own opinion about Santa's little helpers, but I just can't be apologetic about our elf fever over here. My girls look forward to Scout's arrival every year and to be honest, so do I! There are mornings where I wonder if he's made the move or if the girls will be disappointed, but it's worth the extra few minutes to see the smiles on their faces when he is found. In years past, Scout has always showed up on the first of December. Maybe he was worried about ...
Have Your #Selfie a Merry Little Christmas
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Let’s Celebrate
You know what I have to remind myself sometimes? That really insignificant things don't matter. I have a tendency to build things up in my head and then I unravel when they don't go exactly my way. Who cares if all of our outfits *coordinate* on Christmas morning. Really. Wouldn't it be better if everyone was comfortable and the girls were happy, than if we looked like a Christmas card? Kamin and I had talked off and on about when we would take family photos for our Christmas card and the only time we could work it out was while we were camping over the Thanksgiving holiday. I always use our photos for the front of our Christmas card and this year would have been no exception. I had high expectations because, blogger. Doesn't it always matter that other people validate my feelings AND my ...
Dear Amazon,
Warning: Affiliate links appear in the following post. Although shopping the embedded links won’t cost you any additional dollars, using the links below to shop may result in a small commission for me. Thanks for supporting the brands that make this blog possible. I have a confession to make. I used to read really good books. I wasn't even embarrassed to share my reading list with people when they asked. Now? I've sort of turned into a 19 year old girl when it comes to reading. I don't know what my deal is, but I can devour a cheap romance novel in the space of an hour. There are plenty of free and inexpensive reads that I would never recommend. Sometimes I just need to read for the sake of reading. There are plenty of others that I make sure to pass along to my fellow Kindle-addicts, ...
Seeing Santa
Coordinating a day to visit the Big Guy has been much harder than in years past. I feel like Christmas completely snuck up on me this year and I definitely don't have it all together. My house is *barely* decorated, there are still numerous presents en route to the Rockin' House and I still have so many things to accomplish before next week. After comparing schedules and debating Santa locations, we finally got it all together after church last Sunday. We always visit the same setup at a mall about 30 minutes from home. Santa sings and the pictures are always beautiful, if not a little overpriced. I know we can do the whole Bass Pro Shop for free, but I'm going to be honest here, okay? I don't love the whole woodsy scene. The lighting is always bad and I really regretted taking Sophie ...
A Christmas Home Tour (Sort Of)
Remember when Sophie broke the door {hilarious video footage here}?! I had convinced myself that it was like six months ago, but when I scrolled through Instagram looking for the picture, it turns out it was in November. LAST November. We had been living with a square of cardboard on our front door for thirteen months. When we declared 2014 the year of lazy, we really got after it. In case you haven't been to my house before, the stairs to our porch are on the side and there is a tall rock wall along the front of our porch. Nobody can see the door from the drive or the street and we almost always use the back door to come and go. Add a dark shade to the window and it was pretty easy to forget that we were missing a pane of glass. There is a part of me that dreaded replacing the door, ...
Dear Ice Skating,
You are way harder than I remember. (Especially while trying to text Jennifer and skate at the same time. She had to ask me to translate my texts more than once. Ha!) When I was a little girl, Ryan & I used to ice skate all the time. I remember exactly what I wore the last time we went. In like, 1992 or something. I remember thinking I had mastered it. Surely I could pull it off again at 35. Right?! We took the kids to the Pelham Convention Center a few weeks ago to celebrate the birthday of that pretty girl in the middle. Isabella lives in Chattanooga, so when she is here visiting her daddy, we try to get in as much time with her as possible. My girls act like it's Christmas morning when it's her weekend at home! We had talked about ice skating and it's similarities and ...
Catching Up
So my plan for today was a holiday home tour. The problem is, that would actually require that my house be decorated for Christmas. I'm usually done with Christmas shopping in early November and then completely decorated by December 1st, but I'm falling way behind this year. Being out of town over Thanksgiving certainly contributed, but I think a fair amount of laziness has to be acknowledged. I am planning to get the remainder of my decor up over the weekend and have an extra post up to share them all before Monday rolls around. For today, why don't we play catch up? I could have called it 5 on Friday, but there are more than five things. Let's just pretend for the sake of linking up, mmmmkay? While we were on vacation last month, K snapped some pretty cute family pictures for our ...