New Year Fun

We attended the annual youth New Year's Eve party at our church last night. We all had a great time!! We started off with the scavenger hunt- Jamie and I are always drivers! This year we were the Iron Man team, so each bonus question was about the movie Iron Man. The boys stayed with Nana and PaPa while we were gone and they formed the Captain America team and went to Chuckee Cheese and McDonald's! After we found all our locations we still had almost an hour left, so we took our group to Braums for milkshakes!! I told them that's what happens when you rides with the pregnant lady!! When the scavenger hunt was over, we played some fun games and then had a great worship service. At midnight we all danced around the youth building singing and just having s great time!! I was so happy that both boys made it all the way to midnight - and Jonah promptly crashed on my chest soon after!! It was a great night!!!

Happy 2013!!!

Shoulda napped at home!

On our way to New Years Eve youth party and this happened ;) he can't say I didn't try to get him to nap all afternoon!!

Elf on the Shelf: December 7-11

Obviously, elves love sugar in any form. 

If you haven't watched Elf, watch it. Right now! Will Ferrell is perfect as Buddy! He pours syrup on spaghetti. it's a classic in our house. Jamie and I quote lines from Elf more than any other movie...especially this gem, "You smell like beef and cheese. You're a fake. You sit on a throne of lies!" 

We finally got some of our gifts wrapped, so Eli had to try and sneak a peek! my amazing wrapping skills stopped him of course (LOL! and BTW props to my mama for helping me wrap some awkward gifts! I hate wrapping presents!) The pretty yellow chevron ribbon was Noah's pick from Hobby Lobby! I decided not to use gift tags this year and instead I let the kids pick a ribbon so they would know whose gifts are whose! Jonah chose orange sparkly ribbon :)

He could have eaten the whole jar and I wouldn't have cared.. chocolate chip cookie fail! Thought trying a new Pinterest recipe for Bisquick Cookies sounded like a good idea.. it wasn't. They are still in the cookie jar. And PS - we had an open house on Sunday and I left the Elf in the cookie jar... of course I wasn't here so I didn't get to see people's reactions. I hope someone noticed it!!

The boys had fun trying to figure out why Woody would be fighting with Eli :) Maybe Eli wanted to take Woody's hat? Who knows?! But Jonah really enjoyed finding this one and then playing with Woody the rest of the day! 

 Okay, so most of these ideas are not original... (DUH! who has time to come up with this stuff?! i would like to thank Pinterest and several FB friends for supplying me with a never ending list of elf ideas!)...and when i saw this on FB yesterday, I just knew the kids would love it. 

I was wrong.

Noah like seriously got angry about it. Why would Eli touch his precious milk? You cannot make strawberry milk with green milk apparently. Oh no! that's disgusting...so now I have to drink all the green milk by myself. And, I know it's just a mind thing, but it kinda makes me nauseous to think about drinking it. It must be a pregnancy thing...

i wanna see God

While I was sitting at my computer looking up a recipe for our home group this weekend, Jonah sat behind me looking at my Bible. I quickly turned around because this 2 year old tends to be a bit destructive. I stood up and started to take the Bible away when he opened it.

I said, "Jonah, this is God's word. This is my Bible." He replied, "I wanna see God." and it hit me. and because I'm pregnant and I cry a LOT, it made me go all deep and mushy. 

This is exactly why I opened my Bible today, cause I wanna see God. I wanna hear Him talk to me through the beautiful stories, and the paragraphs with too many names that I can't pronounce, and the letters in red that I know His son spoke. I wanna see Him working in my life, my husband's life and in the lives of our children. I wanna see His promises fulfilled. 

I am so thankful for Bible Study Fellowship! I was never good at having a daily quiet time, and to tell the truth, it's still hard for me. But the more I study, the more I wanna know more, understand more. God has given me a deeper need to know Him more, and I feel like over the last two years I've really been learning how to trust in Him and depend on Him to meet my every need. 

I think the words of my 2 year old sum it up pretty well... I wanna see God. 

I hope we can all remember this Christmas season the REAL reason we celebrate. It's not about Santa, or our Elf on the Shelf. It's not about decorations or food. We celebrate the fact that our Savior came as an innocent baby to radically change the world forever and I am so thankful for that! 

*If you haven't heard of Bible Study Fellowship, take a moment and visit www.bsfinternational.org to see if there is a class near you. 

Bowling with Alyssa

Today, the Christmas Calendar gift was "Let's go bowling after church with Alyssa!" After some mild confusion about getting Alyssa taken care of after bowling, her mom knew we were going but didn't tell her dad and they were planning to leave for Dallas after church... It all got sorted out!!... we headed to lunch at a local diner! The kids chowed down! Alyssa ordered catfish :) Jonah ate bacon. Only bacon!! And Noah shared pancakes with Jamie! We loaded up the kids and went to bowling world! Sunday special is two games for $5 shoes and all! Jamie didn't want to bowl due to his shoulder- more on that another day... Well we made it through one game!! Alyssa scored 104, Noah scored 81, Jonah scored 100, and I came in dead last with like 70 points!! I am a terrible bowler!! The kids were all ready to leave so we went back to the church!

O Christmas Tree

 

I thought it would be fun to put trees in the boys' rooms this year since they are loving the christmas lights! We got a cute little blue one for Jonah's room, since they didn't have orange which is his favorite color!
And for Noah, I found a traditional tree with colored lights. We let the boys hang ornaments, you can see most of Jonah's are on the first branch on the bottom! Daddy brought in a special surprise! He gave each boy one of his own ornaments from when he was little!  Jonah got a tiny wooden train and Noah got a little boat called the Jolly Roger! They really thought that was cool!! They love their trees and we've been leaving them on as night lights so it's dual purpose :) It's so fun to watch them get so excited over everything about the Christmas Season!!
I can't believe how big my sweet boys are. And to think that next year, we will have 3 kiddos to celebrate with!! Wow! God has truly blessed us!!

The Nutcracker

Yesterday, I surprised the boys by taking them to see The Nutcracker!

Of course, they had NO CLUE what it was!

 {I had checked out the movie and book from our library, but my guys didn't seem interested}

We all dressed up a little bit so I had to get a belly shot and Noah wanted in..Almost 15 weeks!

 I invited my mom and mother in law to come with us to make it extra special! 

The boys didn't know what to expect and we so excited as we took our seats. Once the lights dimmed they were entranced! Jonah could not stop talking.."where they going? where the presents?" And after every scene, they both (especially Jonah) clapped and clapped!! Noah seemed to understand the story, but Jonah was really just concerned about where everyone had gone when they went offstage!

It was a beautiful show. Our friend Abby was a "party girl" and she did amazing!! She's such a cutie, and she really shines on stage! 

On the way home, I asked Noah what his favorite part was and his response made us crack up..."My favorite part was NONE!" I said, "does that mean you liked everything or nothing?" He said, "Nothing" which wasn't true..he LOVED the mice!!! especially the King Mouse, and we all loved the cute little peppermints!! Jonah's favorite part was the music..he danced a lot! 

They did get a little bored around the end and Jonah kept asking for the iPad that i brought. I told him he couldn't have it until the whole show was over, so as soon as the curtain closed he said, "I have iPad now?" 

I know they really enjoyed themselves because they couldn't stop talking once we got home to tell Daddy!