2 months

I know I haven't posted a thing about our sweet Elise. I'm trying to get on track with this blog thing and I haven't had a lot of time for back tracking . . .

Well, she'll be two months tomorrow . . . 26 hours from now. Andrew and I (and the three) are enjoying her so much. She is the sweetest, most content baby. We're in LOVE!

Christmastime

I love Christmas.

I love everything about it.

I love the atmosphere of people, expecting. I love the crowds, and the lines. I love the baking and the eating! I love the giving (and the receiving)! I love the music! I love that family finally finds time to get together.

I LOVE Eva's purple dress.

It's Christmas Eve. My house is full of sleeping people . . . my four babies, Andrew, his mom, and my brother. My parents are sleeping in a nearby hotel due to my mama's allergies to our pup. I can't sleep. I'm kind of taking in the quiet . . . it hasn't been quiet here in days. I'm staring at our beautiful tree that has way too many presents underneath it (thanks mom and thank you, God for blessing us with the ability to buy these things).

I'm enjoying the porcelain nativity set that my Grandma made so many years ago. When she downsized, she gave it to me. It's so special . . . and yes, there are a couple lego men visiting the baby Jesus.

I'm wishing we had done more to teach our kids about Jesus this season and I wish we would have taught them more about giving. We did have them go through their old toys and picked a couple things that another child would enjoy. Andrew and I called around and found some families that needed Christmas presents. That night we prayed for the little girl with kidney failure who would receive Eva's baby dolls and stroller. We also prayed for the family with the boys who would be getting a new Diego adventure set and a roaring T-Rex. We prayed that their dad would get work soon (and also explained to Eva that being fired doesn't literally mean you're burned up.)

I had really wanted the kids to get each other presents, to take a specific amount of money to the store, pick something out for one of their siblings, and wrap it themselves. I wanted them to experience the joy of giving, but we didn't get that far this year.


Thank you Jesus for an amazing year and an amazing life. Sometimes I feel like we have it too good. You are so good to us. I pray that Andrew and I would would have Your heart and that we'd never be ungrateful. I always want to look to Him and trust Him with everything . . . and not care what the world thinks of me. Thank you, Lord, for sending us your Son, because I am imperfect without Him.

Happy Birthday, Jesus.

Toothless

Caleb lost his other top front tooth this evening . . . rather Andrew pulled it out. Caleb was really brave because he was really scared it would hurt, but it didn't hurt.

Before he went to bed, we practiced his lines for the VCC Christmas play that's in a couple days . . . hahaha! His other top front tooth is growing back . . . its really hard to speak with only half a tooth up there. He's adorable.

He's going to do a great job as narrator 2, with only a little trouble with the word Jerusalem. 

Eva on Cleaning

Eva, "mommy, do we have home group?"
Me, "Not tonight."
Eva, "Then why are you cleaning?"

Tree

While decorating the tree in his room, Micah went to place another ornament on the same section of tree where all his other ornaments were hanging. I suggested he put the ornament on the other side because there were already so many so close together. He told me they were having a party.

Happy Birthday to Our Secret Agents

We celebrated the boys' birthdays this weekend. Micah's 6th birthday was at the end of September and Caleb's 8th birthday will be at the end of October; the day before our baby girl is due. We decided to do a joint birthday party for them, halfway between their birthdays. 

Micah is obsessed with spies and secret agents, so we went with it. Google is my friend and so were some amazing blogs with some great ideas. Here are our secret agents a couple days before the party in their spy getup.

Secret C

Spy M

 Andrew did so much work in preparation for this party. I decorated and took care of the food preparation and then took the kids out for lunch and a couple errands while Andrew and my mom put together a series of "missions." Our boys knew they were having a spy-themed party, but we kept most of the party planning a secret.

As the guests arrived, they were fingerprinted and filled our their spy badges with their chosen Secret Agent code name. They also chose a pair of spy sunglasses.

Our great team of Secret Agents

After eating some hot dogs, they were confronted with their mission -- SOMEONE HAD STOLEN THE BOYS' BIRTHDAY PRESENTS!

. . . and they had left a trap for our spies. Our master bedroom was full of bombs (black balloons) . . . about to blow up! The spies had to defuse them all, as fast as possible. One of the bombs contained a secret message with a map to the next mission, but many of them contained misleading messages of "POW" and "KABOOM!" 

Now, you may be asking where all the delightful pictures are of all this balloon popping chaos . . . I realized after the first three missions and about 100 pictures taken that I had forgotten to put an SD card in my camera and actually had no pictures of all this awesomeness. AHHHHH! I was so upset, but the mission had to go on!

After finding the map, the secret agents were led outside to the laser field.

 

After successfully maneuvering the precarious lasers, they were led to the backyard. Those pesky thieves had left messages on the side of our garage and the fence that read "SPIES STINK" and "YOU'LL NEVER SEE YOUR PRESENTS AGAIN!" Luckily they were written with sidewalk chalk and our agents were given two large water guns and took turns spraying down the evil words.

Sam finishing up the job

Andrew was then sent a message via bluetooth from Spy HQ with the coordinates of the missing presents!!! The thieves had dropped them in their hurry to get away. The boys used a handheld GPS to track down the exact location of the presents. They were in an empty lot near our house. Whew!

The presents have been found!

Micah was happy to find his gift!

 We finished up the party with an awesome spy cake. Sam's Club does an amazing job putting pictures on top of cakes. I LOVE THIS!

 Grammie did a great job helping prepare the food and getting extra things done for us. 

Happy Birthday Caleb and Micah! We love you so much! I'm glad we could spend such a special day celebrating YOU!

BTW - I am due in exactly three weeks . . . that's only 21 days from today! EEK! We're so ready to meet this little gal!

Button Monogram

I saw a picture on Pinterest. I pinned it, along with a million other people. I read the tutorial here and decided to go for it.

I searched around for buttons. Buttons are more expensive than I anticipated. I bought a couple different packages at Walmart. I printed out the outline of a capital "E" on an piece of cardstock. It wouldn't center right. I figured I could trim the edges as needed.

I also bought a heavy duty glue stick. I ended up using a combination of the glue stick and hot glue.

This is how it looked after gluing all the buttons. 

I felt it was missing something, so I went out in search of brads. They are much smaller and could fill in the holes in between the buttons. I ended up with some glittery ones and some very tiny solid colored ones. This was a little tedious punching them through the paper and all, but it definitely helped out.

There have been two white shadow boxes hanging in Eva's room since she was born. I was pretty much done with what had been hanging in them for the past four years. I took one of the frames and my button E and headed to Hobby Lobby hoping to find a matte in a perfect shade of pink, in a pre-cut size. No such luck. I picked out a perfect shade of pink in a large matte, and had it custom made. The girl told me it would only cost a couple dollars, plus I could use my 40% off coupon. Wow. What a deal. She filled out an invoice, which I didn't actually look at, and I left the store.

A couple days later, the store called me. Something made me check the invoice before I left the house. I hadn't realized that although the matte was not very expensive, I was also being charged for the labor of cutting it and assembling the frame. That pushed the price of the matte up to about $13. That was more than I wanted to pay, but I was kinda stuck at this point. Also, you can't use the coupon on the labor part of framing and matting (apparently).

I was pretty thrilled with how it looked. It's a bit uneven due to the buttons and the fact that it didn't print centered in the first place. I maybe should have used a white matte so it wouldn't be so obvious, but it looks really cute in Eva's room now. It was finished the night before her 4th birthday party, so I displayed it on the hutch next to the food table.

I should also take a better picture of the finished product. But its after midnight right now. I'm 35 weeks pregnant and I'm pretty happy that I'm even posting this much. Now I'm obsessed with buttons, especially button monograms. I've bought a bunch of pale pink ones and hopefully will have another E for Baby Elise finished before her arrival . . . keep you posted.