Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Christmas Day 2014


Christmas has come and gone once again, and we feel very blessed this year.  I particularly have just been very grateful for my family, our home, food on the table, the Gospel in our lives, our children, each other, and all that it entails.


We didn't go all out this year for Christmas, in fact, we planned on having a very small Christmas.  We budgeted $100 for each of the boys, and Will and I agreed to do homemade gifts for each other $25 and under.

We were originally hoping to make an offer on a home, and put our current house on the market. Part of that plan was purchasing new bedroom furniture for the boys' room, and our's as well in order to make the rooms look nicer and more staged.  However, if you read my other recent blog where I mentioned the home we were interested was bought by someone else, and we also cannot currently get a loan anyway (due to being self employed), the house-hunting thing has been put on hold.  

But we decided to still keep our budgets small and continue with the "small Christmas" plan anyway, and it turned out very lovely.  I had a lot of fun planning a homemade gift for Will, and the boys also had fun making gifts for everyone in the family...






Here is my gift for Will- it was a "date package", for an all-day date to go hiking together, have a picnic, and more.  I wanted to give him something that he would particularly enjoy. I always seem to pick the dates and they usually involve a movie and Italian food.  For this though, I wanted it to be all about him.



This little guy woke up around 11:30 on Christmas Eve hungry and so I brought him down into the kitchen to give him a midnight snack...Even though he is still nursing, he wanted actual solid food.



The next morning the boys woke up at 6:30 a.m. and actually were very good and hung out in their bedrooms chatting with each other for like a half hour, until they eventually started to wander downstairs to discover that Santa Claus had come.



Yes, yes....our child is holding Jack the Elf, but only because we allowed the boys to give him a goodbye hug before he went back to the North Pole until next Christmas.






Riley was trying to figure out what the heck was going on, but he was pretty excited about his Sleep Sheep and his stackable rings and balls.


My absolute favorite was opening Will's homemade gift to me.  I actually shed some tears on this. He put this together himself...and it involved WORDS...so many wonderful words that have so much meaning to me. I can't even tell you how awesome this gift was. I will treasure it forever.  And this is just a small version of it.  Apparently he ordered a wall-size mounted canvas, but it wasn't ready by Christmas (still waiting for it to be delivered).



Christmas morning was very relaxing. I made hot cocoa and traditional Pilsbury orange cinnamon rolls (a Southworth tradition).




Someone snuck onto our porch around 12:30 a.m. and delivered real snow. :) How fun. Guess I got my wish for a "white" Christmas afterall.





The boys had fun playing some games together...




My parents gave us a beautiful framed family photo for our wall...





This little guy totally dug his first Christmas!





And Will enjoyed a long winter's nap. :)


Here is a video of Christmas morning, a little of Christmas Eve, as well as a couple shots from our post-Christmas weekend at Long Beach with Will's family.  Please note I didn't edit any of this, it's the full clips - mostly because I know years from now it will be fun to see/hear. Oh, and it's terrible quality - but I had to keep minimizing the size in order for Blogger to upload it. I have a better file on our computer (for my own personal reference).



Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Merry Christmas Eve!


Welp!  Today was Christmas Eve, and it's a day our boys have been long looking forward to for weeks!

But...I have to say, it didn't exactly go as I personally would have loved for it to go.

As you can see from this photo below...


And this one too...



Parenting mistake #1:  Don't let your kids stay up until midnight two days in a row watching Christmas movies, because you know that regardless of how late or early they go to bed they will STILL wake up at the crack of dawn.

Parenting mistake #2:  Trying to do Christmas festivities with kids who are sleep deprived and also going through the thick of horrible colds.



My parents came to spend the day with us, and I found myself apologizing several times, saying "If I can just get my kids to take a power nap, they will be much happier, and then I will be much happier too."




It did take an extra long trip up I-90 before Taylor finally relented and shut his little eyes and fell asleep for a whole whopping 20 minute nap, which I'm pretty sure he might have even been grumpier upon waking than before he fell asleep.

Great news though - look who is walking without crutches!  Oh, I probably failed to mention Will sprained his ankle pretty bad several days ago and thought he broke his foot, but thankfully just a sprain.  He's been hobbling around on crutches for a few days and today he felt good enough to hobble around on his foot.


This next photo looks so cute and serene.  But it's actually Grandma giving Taylor a piggy-pack ride after he threw a tantrum about not wanting to walk any more.



Preston has been pretty good today - aside from a few fights with his brother.  He and Grandma made Santa cookies and they turned out super cute! He had been looking forward to making these cookies all week!



Preston is so creative and artistic, these were the perfect cookies for him to make!




I smoked 3 salmons in our smoker all day long and they turned out mighty tasty for dinner.



After dinner, we opened some early presents while G&G were still here. They left shortly after dinner to drive to Pendleton to spend Christmas day with Grandma Lindsay.






Grandma Thomas sent the boys each $5 to use to buy someone they loved some gifts. Taylor is so cute. He told me earlier this week, "But mama, I just love YOU!".  However, he decided to buy Grandma and Grandpa gifts, as you can see below what he picked out for Grandpa!



My mom got me a duet book!


And some yummy treats...


We tried to get some shots of the boys in their new Christmas pajamas....but like I said, everyone is pretty tired in these photos.






My dad gave us a beautiful family photo that he took of us...



Is it bad that I spiked the boys' lemonade with cough syrup?  They didn't fall for it though.  Once they got to the bottom of the glass they did the yucky face.  Drat. I don't know what parent out there can get their kid to drink that stuff. It would sure make our lives easier if they would drink it though when they are sick! Haha...


We have sure felt the love this year from friends and family...