Finishing December

After we finally returned to our reality and while J worked on finding a job, we stayed pretty busy!

We got to buy our first Christmas tree! We used a little of the money J made helping put up Christmas lights with a guy from our church.

Here, he's putting our beautiful tree on J's parent's car. :)

It was soooo cold when we bought it, that it continued to sigh in relief when we put it in a warm house with water to drink! It got so big!

So then we bought 4 strands of lights and decorated this tree!

It was so fun to decorate my tree with my ornaments!! 

C LOVED the tree. He would constantly play with the ornaments and bring them to me….such a helper...

I've had this advent calendar for at least 10 years. Maybe 15…

We finally used it!

My Christmas decorations weren't very kid-friendly. But my mom got us our very own Little People nativity! It was such a lovely surprise!

When J helped with setting up Christmas lights, the guy he helped just gave him tons of the ones he was throwing away-tangled, half-working etc.

So we fixed em and strung em up!

It was so lovely!!

Because we were unemployed, we hung out at J's parents' place frequently.

C loves stairs. he's almost always playing on them (even now as I write this in April, he loves climbing those stairs.)

I love it when they read together. Melts my heart.

J's parents wanted some festive lights out front of their house, so we wound their trees with lots of pretty lights!

Next year, I think we need to string lights on the house itself. That would be cool.

C was big enough to ride Daddy's horse, so we had this out a lot. I have a picture of him on it right after his bath. I think that'll be a wedding slideshow photo one day. :)

This is from our ward's Christmas party. Santa was played by a 15 year old… haha

But 15 or 51 or any age really, Santa is scary. hahaha

My cute little old man in his sunday clothes. So stinkin adorable!!

Making mommy's lunch 

My little boy LOVES books! It makes this teacher so happy!! He is almost ALWAYS surrounded by books!

I am pretty sure I set the Little People nativity back up about 5 times per day.

C loved playing with them!

Here, we have a wise man who arrived at the stable in STYLE!

Love taking selfies with this kiddo! heehee

This is a foam square that was in a package to C months ago. He loves playing with it and likes it on as a hat

C really liked his bottles. When he went to the hospital, I stopped trying to give him a sippy cup. It was too tough and I was just glad he was drinking and staying hydrated with his bottle.

But this picture below was the line. he was done when he left teeth marks on the nipple. Crazy kid!

This was the ornaments the Young Women leaders gave to our beautiful Young Women for Christmas. 

It has the theme for the year, Stand in Holy Places on the front and each of us signed it on the back along with the year.

A few days before Christmas, we went to stay at J's parents' place for Christmas!

Here's C reading with Gpa.

C loved nutella. But who can blame him?

Christmas Eve, we usually go to J's uncle's house for personal pizzas, games, and making signs for Santa.

It was a really enjoyable, fun evening. C loved making his sign.

You can decorate the sign however you want, but you need to have your name on it and where Santa should put your presents. :)

Here are C's presents-A Scentsy Buddy-monkey, treats, and HotWheels!

J and I have decided that Santa gives the kids simpler gifts, but still fun. And the parents get to give the best gifts. :) We gave him a Little People airplane that sings and zoo legos!

Gma and Gpa Curtis gave him this awesome car and some toys.

Gma and Gpa Tobler gave him some books, a Razorback shirt, and some toys

One of my favorite toys he got was 10 soft, squishy blocks. They're easier to stack than wood and nice, because they don't hurt to step on! 

After Christmas, we went home for a few days then came back for a few more when Todd and Jolyn would be there more.

We met up at church. Here's Gpa with his grandsons on his lap

Solitary, thoughtful time with Gma

One of my favorite gifts I got this year was a shopping spree! I got money to go shopping for ME! I'd only been a mom for 16 months (then) and I was beginning to realize that I didn't shop for me anymore. I always justified putting that shirt I loved back onto the rack. 

So I got to go shopping!! I even had some extra money from my birthday the year before!

Linda, Jolyn, Kristin and I went shopping at cheaper stores! It was lovely! I spent $30 at DI and got 4 shirts and a sweater. I spent $60 at Macy's Outlet and got a maxi skirt, a $99 dress, and sexy mom-jeans. And then I got some socks-most had holes, so it was time- and a few of my favorite songs for a running mix. 

It was awesome. I loved the time spent and the fact that I had no guilt buying stuff for me!

Sign me up for next year!! :)

This is Jolyn wearing an awesome suit I just couldn't convince her to buy!! ;)

Kristin got some very hot dresses. She's pretty much a babe.

New Year's Eve, we made cookies (See below my awesome marbled sugar cookies), made resolutions, had a marshmallow fight, drank sparkling cider, and played games. The marshmallows was fun.

He's a goon.

My silly nephew telling a story that really didn't have much of a plot, but the room was captivated.

It was a good month. It was a little hard to be unemployed at the holidays, but looking back I have realized how we did it.
We could chalk it up to having a great savings account, but guess what?

We didn't use much of it.

We were able to get new toys for C's presents, buy something for each other, our parents, and the sibling we gave to in the gift exchanges. We bought a tree, stand, and lights. 

You know what I chalk it up to, really?

We pay our tithing.

Yep. Tithing.

I didn't really have much of a testimony of tithing except that it had good results because you help build temples and buy new chairs and nice resources for buildings everywhere. 

But really, we have always paid our tithing and it has kept us safe from debt and hardship. Pretty amazing that because we pay 10% of our income we are able to afford things when we don't even have an income. 

So thankful for a merciful, giving Lord who loves me and my little family!!

J's Birthday Party

J's birthday is in December. We celebrated with an evening of his choices for food, dessert, and game at his parent's house.

We had shish-ka-bobs, I think. 

We don't have them very often because most of the things on them aren't my favorite things-peppers, onions, mushrooms... oh my

Then we played my LEAST favorite game. 

(Sorry Greenhalgh's! I just don't dig it. Wow, ironic? k. done…)

It's called Wildcatting. J's uncles made it. There are holes in each county and underneath are pieces of wood of various shapes and sizes. You shake the board up, then place it on the table and it doesn't move the rest of the game. You then buy properties and buy the pins-oil rigs- to drill for oil. If your pin hits a board, you struck oil. If it sinks, you didn't. You make money off each pin that hits oil.

It's tough and strategic with weird luck. :) J loves it and I don't. It's like Monopoly to me.

Anyway!

J got some things for his new motorcycle. He got money towards a helmet and a cool armored jacket.

One of his favorite desserts is Cookie Monsters, so we made those for him. He was happy.

Chocolate chip cookie, ice cream on top, then whipped cream and chocolate and caramel syrup. 

Yummy goodness.

I love my sweet husband. He is so special to me. I am thankful for him and his strength and the team that we make. He's a wonderful daddy and I love him to pieces!!

Return to Reality and Snow!

FINALLY getting back to home, we had to return to reality as well. I had to accept that my life was going to be different. I had to help my hubby find a new job. I had to support and still be there for him.

It was kind of a shocker to return home after a month away.

C was happy to be home. :)

In one of the suitcases, we took home some of my inheritance from grandparents.

I was soooo happy to get home and see that nothing was broken! I was sooooo worried!

This was the day after we got home. It was all cold outside, so I wore my new sockies from Rachel and C took a nice, long bath until the water was cool.

Told ya there was lots of snow! This stuff stayed for a really long time!! When it did melt, more followed! It was crazy for Boise to get that much snow!

That first Saturday we were back, we went to J's parents' Christmas party. It was a breakfast and you could see Santa and also see the nativity. It was cool how they connected Santa with Christ's birth the way they did. They had Santa in this room, then a pathway through to another room (they had starry-looking plastic to make the hallway secluded from the rest). Then in the next room, they had a Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus all dressed up in a manger in a darker room. It was quite special.

C was NOT ok with Santa. Way too scary. hahahahahahahaha

C had to get out just about every toy he had to say hello to it

Playing video games with daddy.

C didn't know what to think of the snow, but he handled it well!

Brrrrr!!!!!!!

haha Ty's in Florida. Punk!

Since J didn't have his job, I was on the look out for subbing jobs. As if in an answer to prayer, one of my old friends from my student teaching asked if I could sub in her class. I've been sooo thankful for her asking for me specifically!

This is a tree in front of their school. The frost was beautiful.

Along with all of our frosty, snowy world, we also got inversion. It was CRAZY!! It stayed around FAR too long. I'm not even sure how long it was. Man, oh man! At the end of it, everyone was leaving on the weekends to seek higher elevation where they could be above our blanket of dreariness!

Pretty frozen tree.

The lake was…mostly…frozen over… :) 

Thankfully, J didn't fall in. He backed off before it started to crack. Yikes.

Heading home from Arkansas

Normally, I don't think that going home from somewhere requires an entire blog post.

Except for this one.

It was the longest time I've taken to fly anywhere ever. (that made total sense. don't worry.)

So we were to head home on Dec 3. Our flight was somewhere early in the morning like 7. 

We got to the airport at 5 and found the longest line I've ever seen to check in. 

A lady in line said to her friend that online it said our flight was 7 hours delayed. WHAT?!?!?! 

We looked it up, freaked out, called United, and got it as sorted out as we could.

We decided to go back to my parents' place for the night and leave the next day. We'd leave in the afternoon, fly in to Chicago instead of Denver (? I think?), and get to Salt Lake that night, spend the night at J's cousin's place, and drive up to Nampa the next day. 

This is C going up the escalator, down the escalator, up, down, up, down, up, down for a long time while Daddy got things figured out.

Mom came and picked us up and C promptly fell back asleep on the way home. (All those tears saying goodbye that morning were wasted since I saw her and Dad later that day!!)

I really enjoyed staying just a little bit longer. Everything feels so rushed when you have a set time to leave. So when you get an extra day, you're able to relax and enjoy rather than rush. 

Mom and Dad took us out to dinner and we bought a christmas tree!

(p.s. my mom is the sweetest, most amazing, wonderful, cutest ladies I've EVER known. And will ever know.)

Reading with Daddy

The next morning, we decorated the Christmas tree. C loved the ornaments.

Remember the y'all shirt? My sister got one, too! It was funny because every time one of us wore it, the other did as well. "It's like we have ESPN or something!"

So we were off to Chicago! 2 hours late. Sooo annoying! It wasn't enough time to warrant having my parents pick me up again, so we stuck it out at the airport. Everyone knew the adorable boy with the blue eyes who walked around and around asking for their food.

The flight was ok. :)

THANKFULLY, he fell asleep. It's exhausting because he just needs so much attention but wants his space!!

We got to Chicago quite a bit later than our flight to Salt Lake left. So while J went to demand a hotel room, C and I ran round and around and around.

We didn't get a room for free, but we got our flight figured out for the next morning and a coupon for hotels.

This is C and me on the way to the hotel in Chicago.

Brochures are excellent at occupying a 15 month old who has been bored and needing his space for the last day, pretty much!

He zonked quickly and J and I ordered overpriced, but still yummy, pizza that got there at 10 pm. Ugh.

So, wearing dirty, used clothes, we got on another plane the next morning. (we had the big bag checked back on the 3rd) There were Brazilians on the row in front of us who loved speaking Portuguese with J and playing with C. He loved them and asked to sit with them frequently, and, bless them, they took him for a little here and there. I should have slept for those 5 minutes… :)

We got to Salt Lake, J's cousin took us to her house, where our car was, fed us, and let us change clothes, and we were off to drive the 6 hours back home.

It took forever. We were exhausted. Thankfully, the drive home was uneventful. I did, however, have to sing to myself the last hour to keep myself awake. Yikes!