Tis the Season

The day after Thanksgiving I made Joel drag out all of our Christmas decorations so we could put them up and enjoy them for awhile. In our new house we have a formal living room and a family room so I feel as though I do not have enough decorations to go around, but I think it turned out very nicely! It looks very festive and we bought a pine scented candle so it smells festive too!

Unloading the Christmas Tree.

The chosen Christmas Tree spot!

Comin' along....

Let the decorating begin!

I let the kids put all of the ornaments on the tree by themselves and this is how it turned out! BEAUTIFUL!!

They were so proud!

Isabel wanted to take a family portrait! Not too shabby.

It was Isabel's turn to put up the angel.

The finished product ... yes, I spread the ornaments out after the kids were done putting them on.

Hanging stockings! We have a fireplace this year! Another thing that is new and exciting to us! A real place to hang our stockings!!!

Love it!

The finished product!

Isabel Turns 6!!

November 5 was a very important day for me! It marked 6 YEARS since I became a mommy! We had a great day together as a family! Joel took the day off of work and we got to spend the whole day together ... a rarity around here these days since Joel switched jobs. We started the day off with presents!
Isabel wanted a pair of "Ugg" boots so that's what she got! After presents we took the kids to the Zoo. They love the zoo and Fall is one of the best times to visit our zoo so we took advantage of our Membership and went up there for a bit! After the zoo we went to the library (another of Isabel's favorite places) and we ended the day by taking the kids and a friend to Build A Bear. Isabel chose to take her friend Mikenna .. they don't get to see each other often so this was a good opportunity for them to spend some quality girl time together! I think Isabel had a great birthday! We are so thankful for our little girl!

Uncle Druh's Visit

At the beginning of October, Uncle Druh paid us a visit. He was just in time for fall to kick in full swing and he and the kids got to really enjoy it!

As I mentioned in my previous post, we have HUGE trees here at our new house. They are large and beautiful and they shed tons and tons of leaves. We actually had to spend a day raking all of the leaves off of our lawn ... a chore that we have never had to tackle and didn't particularly enjoy. The day that we chose to rake was a day that Druh was here to help! Joel took some pretty good pictures of the kids enjoying the leaves with their Uncle Druh. Is it any wonder that he is just about their favorite person in the whole world??

Ch ch ch ch ch changes.......

Were you starting to think I had abandoned the blog?? My apologies for the long pause between posts. Things in our lives have been anything but routine this last month!

We started October off with a move. As many of you know, in June Joel changed jobs. He is now working for USAA (big doings around here with all the military - they provide insurance to our military). When he made this change we took a very substantial pay cut. We did what we could to make it work for as long as we could and finally decided that we should sell our house and move to a house that would require a smaller monthly payment. It was a sad move for us since we loved our house and had planned on dying there, but this provides a more stress-free life for us so we are making the best of it! We found a cute house in a more mature part of town ..... WE HAVE TREES PEOPLE!!! Also our new house has 4 bedrooms! This means ... WE HAVE A PLAYROOM PEOPLE!!! We are working to get settled into our new house ... I think we might have about 5 boxes left to unpack! Not too shabby! The new house doesn't feel quite like home yet, I miss our old house, but I'm hoping it will get there one day. I haven't taken any pictures of the new house yet ... it's not quite finished yet, but I do have pictures of the madness that was moving day ...

The living room .. couldn't get to those couches for over a week.

The dining area .. didn't eat a meal at that table for a couple of days.

The playroom that you couldn't even walk into.

The kitchen .. I spent the whole first day getting this in order .. took me 8 hours and I hated this room when I was done, but it was functional right away and that made our bellies happy!

So, once things get more settled around here I'll post some pictures of the finished product.