december in a nutshell

The last few weeks have been a little more crazy than I had expected.  A few days after my last post we found out that my grandma had passed away.  On the same day that my dad had his thyroid removal surgery.  It was such a terrible thing to have to tell my dad that his mom had died while he was in the recovery room.  I traveled with my mom and dad to California for the funeral while Eric held down the fort at home with the boys. 

Cannon also got ear tubes put in on the 8th.  He had been on very strong antibiotics for a while and his ear infections still kept returning.  He did really great.  Luckily, we knew what to expect since Charlie had tubes too and it all went as expected.  Cannon is also doing really good with potty training.  He still has some trouble with going number two on the potty, but overall he has it down.

I was so relieved that I had so much of my holiday preparation done early this year so I didn't have to stress too much while I was gone.  Eric kept up with Teeny the elf and the advent calendar activities.

So here's our December in a nutshell:

We made snowflakes.

  
......and salt dough ornaments.

We decorated gingerbread houses.

We said goodbye to Grandma's house for the last time.

We did some holiday baking.

The boys met Teeny the elf.

And we inherited my mom's ceramic christmas tree from 1976.

It has been one heck of a month.  I am not ashamed to say that the Christmas tree and all decorations were taken down and put away yesterday.  It was great while it lasted, but it feels so good when it's over too!

merry christmas from the smith's

kicking off december....

It has been a full and very good week.

Before getting out the Christmas decorations, I felt the need to purge a little first.  No room or closet was safe.  When life is a little crazy, there is nothing better than organized closets and big full bags to take to the goodwill.

Then it was time to decorate the tree.  It was much more fun this year than last because Cannon is starting to "get it".  He loved looking at every single decoration and trying to find the perfect spot for it.  He was a fan of one branch in particular and it took a little convincing that we needed to cover the whole tree.  Charlie was into it too - he is old enough to remember the ornaments and wanted to put up all his homemade ones first.

Every year I always have all these ideas of things I want to do to make the holidays special. I usually end up putting them off too long until things get busy and then they just don't happen.  I decided I wasn't going to let that happen this year.  The boys are at the perfect ages right now where they really believe in the magic of the season and I know that these years won't last long.  So, I made a list.  A long, long list.

And I have been having so much fun preparing without the stress. And you know what else?  I am about 95% done with my christmas shopping, all presents are wrapped (including handmade gift tags), and my Christmas cards have been ordered and stamps/envelopes have been purchased. 

This week I also finished my last two classes and I am now officially done with school!  The last 16 months have been tough trying to balance my classes amongst everything else, but now it feels so good to just have it done.  I also just finished up my internship at a local law firm and they offered me a position.  For now I will just be working Tuesday-Thursday, but hopefully things will pick up in the Spring and I can move to full time.

On Friday night the boys wrote their letters to santa.  Cannon definitely does not understand the santa concept, but he is always up for some drawing/coloring.  Charlie on the other hand was completely serious about the whole thing.  He is very concerned that Santa will not get his letter and he will not get the items on his wishlist.  No matter what we say, I don't think there is much we can do to reassure him that everything will be okay until he sees for himself on the big day.

I am excited and blessed to get to spend every minute of my favorite season with my favorite boys.  This is going to be the best Christmas yet.

blur.

The last six weeks have been a total blur. I suppose that is what happens when you have 2 kids, move 1400 miles across the country, attend school and start a new part-time job during the holidays. Life has been moving at a tremendous speed lately, but you know what? We are all doing just fine. We are together and we are taking care of each other and things are good.

With the big tradeshow coming up and lots to do for that, things will continue to be busy for a while but we will just keep taking it all one day at a time.

I wanted to get down a few thoughts about our holidays before I completely forget! This year we really scaled back. We just didn't have the time to do everything we wanted to but it made me evaluate what is important. Even though it was the last thing I wanted to do after unpacking all our boxes, we did get the christmas decorations out. Overall, the boys couldn't care less about decorating the tree, but they did love this little toy. It has always been a favorite of Charlie's and now Cannon has discovered it too.


The one thing Charlie insisted we do is make cookies for Santa. He didn't care about anything but making sure he got the Michael Jackson Experience game for his Nintendo DS. He was pretty sure Santa was bringing it for him so we had to be sure to take care of the big guy by leaving him some treats.


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The boys slept pretty well and even waited till 7am to get up. They got lots of great things from their friends and family and we all felt very blessed and loved this year.
Cannon figured out the presents thing pretty quickly.
After presents we got ready and drove to Des Moines to spend some time with Eric's sister and her family. It has been a while since the boys got to play with their cousins. It was great to relax and catch-up.



Because of all the craziness lately, I was happy to get all the decorations put away and get things back to a little more "normal". It was nice to keep things simple this year and focus on what is most important. I will definitely have to keep this in mind next year.