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holiday
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 ...
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, ...
On The Hunt
One of my favorite Christmas traditions, the one that welcomes the holiday season to our house, is our annual trip to the tree tent. We almost always go the morning after Thanksgiving, load up on pancakes at IHOP and then dash around the corner to pick out our tree. Despite the fact that we live in rural Alabama and there are plenty of places to chop down our own evergreen, my girls delight in the big striped tent. It's a family from out of state who operate from an RV for the month of December and sell the most beautiful Frasier Firs we've ever seen. Since we were out of town the week of Thanksgiving, our Friday morning trek into town didn't happen. I lobbied for Sunday afternoon, but the girls were already under the weather and we were exhausted from traveling. We hated to wait an ...
Wild at Heart
As a little girl, I always loved hiking and navigating the trails in Fort Payne with my daddy. It was one of the things I looked forward to the most and I couldn't wait to share it with my girls. We loaded up the truck on Saturday morning and made the fifteen minute drive to Little River Canyon and my girls loved every minute of it. We started off at the top of the falls on the boardwalk, but of course my girls did not enjoy being contained. We did look out over the falls and posed for a few pictures, but they were itching to get their hands and feet in the water. But not before we got a picture of Rainbow Dash in front of the falls. Sophie insisted. We found a set of rock steps that led down to the river and these wild ones were at the shore before you could blink. We joked ...
Thanksgiving Camp
Our Thanksgiving vacation was touch and go for a few days, but we managed to pull it off without a hitch. Josh and my dad drove us up to Fort Payne on Sunday afternoon and helped us get our camp set up. They both had to work the first part of the week, so they left us later in the day and came back up on Wednesday afternoon. Desoto State Park isn't somewhere we go annually like Gulf Shores, but we do enjoy a visit every once in awhile. The last time we went for Thanksgiving was right after Josh and I got married and we stayed in a cabin that year. We've gone back to camp twice since then, but neither time was for more than a few days and it was earlier in the season. This is even less exciting that the beach trips because there isn't much sightseeing to be done and there aren't any ...
A Halloween Recap
If you've been reading here for any amount of time, you might remember that we usually head to our church's annual Trunk or Treat to celebrate Halloween. Last year we partnered with another local church to celebrate, but this year we didn't host anything at all. There is a part of me that is so sad when established traditions screech to a halt, but this year we were able to squeeze our week with so many other fun things that we didn't have time to be sad. First up was "Tappy Halloween" at our dance studio. The competition teams don't participate, so I didn't get to watch Ella dance, but we did get to observe the little girls and have a special snack after class. Sophie was a mermaid for Halloween this year. We bought her costume over the summer at the beach and she has been so excited to ...