Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is full of tradition in my family. Every year, after the Christmas Eve service, we go back to my parent's house and get dinner ready. We always have to have the same exact thing every year: shrimp cocktail, steak, twice baked potatoes, broccoli rice casserole, rolls, and a happy birthday Jesus cake for dessert, all eaten in te formal dining room around candle light.

 

Well, things got a little crazy this year...

 

About a week ago, both of my parents came down with the flu. My dad got better pretty quickly, but my mom also had a sinus infection along with it and her illness lingered forever! We thought she would definitely be better for Christmas Eve, but about 2 hours before Michael, Bryson and I were going to leave for Christmas Eve service, my mom called saying her fever came back and we couldn't do it at their house. It was going to be at our house instead! We had an hour and a half to make our home "christmas eve worthy" all the while getting ready for church. Thankfully, B was napping so we could run around like crazy cleaning and getting things and set up!

 

We tried to wake up Bryson from his nap, but he was NOT having it. After a while, Michael just carried him to the car and we were going to change him in the parking lot. See... NOT a happy camper!! :(

 

Fortunately, he perked up when we told him we would get to sing "Away in a manger" at church in a few minutes. I kid you not, he/we have sung that song over 3,000 times in the last couple weeks.

This was his first time in "big church" since last Christmas Eve, so we talked about all the rules we had to obey: sitting in our chair, whispering, etc. He did GREAT!!

He loved getting to go up and listen to the Christmas story of stage with all the kids! Even though there were over a hundred kids up there, he (true to form) ended up squeezing his way all the way up the stairs closer to the book :)

 

He loved standing with Grandma and Papa and "singing" all the other songs, but his favorite things was lighting the candle!

 

There's something so perfect and pure about this picture that I just adore.

 

Afterwards, we went back to our house and met the rest of the family to start getting things ready for dinner. Everyone chipped in and helped. It was so weird not having my mom there; we really missed her. But, Brandon was really great at sending her minute by minute pictures and videos to keep her up to speed :)

 

 

 

 

I had started having some pretty intense pain in my right side (again) but tried to push through it while we were making dinner. I actually had also started timing my Braxton Hicks contractions.

 

We had a lovely and delicious candle lit dinner. :)

 

The pain in my side was so intense and the contractions were coming every 10 minutes, so my dad suggested I go call my doctor. The on call Dr told me the same thing as last time- most likely just muscle pain, so just lay down on a heating pad, drink lots of water and take some Tylenol and if it's not better in an hour, go to the hospital. I was pretty much freaking out on the inside. :/

 

We went ahead and went on with our nightly traditions. We sang Happy Birthday to Jesus, read the Christmas story, sang some songs (Away in a Manger was requested about 8 times! :)) and then opened each others gifts. 

 

 

 

 

 

After an hour or two, I started to feel a little better, but it was still a pretty crazy night! We hated that my mom was at home by herself on Christmas Eve, we missed her like crazy. But, all in all, it was a nice night! Totally not what we expected, but nice non-the-less :)

 

Then, off to bed to wait for Santa to come!!

Merry Christmas Eve!!

 

My ABF Shower!!

Our ABF (adult bible fellowship...aka sunday school) hosted a shower for us on Saturday. It was so special!!

 

Several of our friends and family came to celebrate our little girls :)

 

My mom, sisters, mother -n-law and sister-in-law were all able to be there with us, too!!

 

We have had SO many babies over the past 6 months, and 3 more are pregnant right now. Our ABF has decided that we want have showers for everyone without it being a financial burden on just one or two people, so we do a "potluck" shower. Everyone signs up to bring something and help out with the details of the shower so it's a group project.  I think it's brilliant! All of the food was delicious!! 

 

Nicole came up with the cutest games :)

The first was to see who could match socks the fastest since I'll be doing loads and loads of laundy :)

 

The 2nd was to put a paper plate on your head and draw "twins" it was pretty funny to watch everyone try to draw on top of their heads and even funnier to see the outcome of the pictures!!

 

The 3rd was to multitask. We had to hold 2 babies safely while vaccuming the floor and hanging up laundry with the fastest time. It was cute :)

 

Of course I'm the one that has to do all of these things and sadly I didn't win any of the games. I'm too slow :)

 

The girls got diapers, a high chair, adorable blankets, teddy bears and tons and tons adorable girly clothes!! All very much necessities ;)

 

I am incredibly blessed with all of their friendships. I always look forward to Sunday mornings and our get togethers when we all get to catchup. I love that we're all so different, yet have so much in common. It's fun to "do life" with them and have all of our kids grow up together :)

 

Trunk Or Treat

We had our first Halloween outing on Wednesday! Bryson was SOO excited about going. He is really into Halloween this year and likes "spooky halloween" things, so he thought it was funny that our church was doing a spooky halloween party (no matter how many times I told him it wasn't spooky!)

 

He was also thrilled to the core to dress up as Geo from Team Umizoomi!! He's been talking about it for weeks!! His outfit was a little thrown together, but he looked so darn cute. I giggled the whole time I was pulling up his belt!!

 

Our church changed up their Fall festival this year and did the ever popular Trunk or Treat. It was fun, but if I'm being honest, I miss our old fall festival, it was so much more interactive and fun! They did, however, make up for it with the amount of bounce houses/ inflatbles!!

 

Bryson was all excited about the idea of candy before we got there, but he could not have cared less about the candy as soon as he saw all the bounce houses! The belt and helmet came off immediately after the first obstacle course because he couldn't go fast. :)

 

He spent about 30 minutes on repeat doing this same obstable course! He just loves to climb!

 

 

He did like this fishing game and kept asking why there wasn't a lake for the fish :)

 

He worked up an appetite and we took a quick food break

 

Then went over to the petting zoo

 

And then back to the inflatables!! :)

They had a Baseball inflatable and of course, he loved it!! I'm sure he would have done it multiple times, but the line was soo long. Our little lefty has a pretty darn good swing!!

 

 

 

Our ABF had an interactive car and had a firefighter training camp, where the kids go through a tunnel in the van and then come out and get candy. It was adorable! They did such a great job with it!!

 

Bryson and Nate ran all around the parking lot after it was over. They're so cute together! Nate is a month older than Bryson and they have the best time together  :)

 

Can't wait for our next Halloween outing :)

 

Engaged

This past weekend was "Engage Sunday" at our church.

It's a day where everyone in the entire church comes dressed in their Sunday best

and goes out into the community to be the hands of Jesus. It's amazing.

Over 2,000 people loaded up in 70 school buses and went to different places to help do jobs.

Our ABF went to a school in Richardson that desperately needed classrooms painted and landscaping in the front of the school. Thankfully, the rain stopped just in time and everything looked great!!

Michael and I were inside painting. The walls started out off white, bright green textured wallpaper and black cement....

 ...and ended up white! Phew!

It was a great time of fellowship with friends and a true pleasure to be a part of this amazing day.

I love our church!

Easter Weekend Part 1

We had suuch a fun Easter this year. We did the normal "Easter things" with Bryson last year, but this year, he was actually able to participate and he had so much fun! I can't wait for the day that he will know and understand the real meaning of Easter. :)

We knew Bryson was going to have a lot of egg hunts this year, so the entire week prior to Easter, we practiced hunting eggs at the house. I put gummie snacks and M&Ms inside the eggs and after a couple of practice rounds, he got the egg hunting down pat!

His first egg hunt was with his school on Thursday and he was a pro already. His teachers said he knew exactly what to do and where to put the eggs. Woohoo! Practicing paid off! haha :)

Egg Hunt #2 was at our church on Saturday. It didn'tstart until 10:10 and we got there a little early, so we had to wait. Bryson didn't like that idea and tried to sneak under the gate a few times. He was ready for those eggs! haha

He was in the "under 2" age group. All the kids were ADORABLE!!!

Bryson knew that there was candy in the eggs so he decided that there was no need for those little round plasic things, he just picked up all the candy and left the egg. HAHA!

 He was SO funny running all over the place. This is mid-sprint for an egg!! It cracks me up!

I love our church. They always go ALL out for any kind of activity. They even had a petting zoo, which was a huuuge hit!

After the egg hunt, we headed down to the Dallas Zoo. They remodeled the zoo a few years ago and it is fantastic!! The weather was great and Bryson really loved seeing all the animals.

We started off in the Children's side at Petting Zoo. It was really fun for him to see all these animals in person. He knows what they look like in books, but to see them in real life is so different.

Then, we went on to the rest of the zoo...

Michael and I had so much fun watching Bryson get so excited about the animals! We can't wait to go back!!