Life At The Circus

After spending Christmas morning at our house with my wonderful in-laws and grandpa in law, we went to PA this weekend to celebrate with my parents and my brother's family .  I just had to share some more candid gems because they just warmed my heart and I feel my hubby did a great job of capturing the love and fun of our day together.  We all had lunch together on Sunday and afterwards the youngest two of our crews took naps while everyone else enjoyed a relaxing afternoon of play.  We all went into my brother's old bed room which my two oldest have now deemed "their room" because that is where they always sleep at Grandma and Papa's and the kids had fun building forts and playing around.  The kids had a blast hiding in their "fort" made out of an old exercise mat.  They'd go in and then pop open the door and flash a smile.  One of my favorite moments was when my son was playing with my oldest niece.  She started whispering to him but it wasn...

  While these were beautiful sights to behold,     She stole the show for me.    And while we did enjoy taking in the lights, and some holiday cheer,   Everyone's favorite part was the journey home .  <-- Last Mondays Post   Visit 5 Minutes for Mom for more Wordless Wednesdays .  

Christmas provides you with many gems...photos which capture the moment, in real life.  Nothing like posing in front of the tree to bring out the true personality of your child.  Yes... this is def what I meant when I said , "Smile in front of the camera so Mom can have a picture of you in your nice church clothes."    I love this pic... I am entitling it Christmas bliss... I love that it is not posed.. you can see all three kids enjoying their gifts... wrapping paper on the floor and a happy Daddy interacting with this kids.  True gem this photo is...     This one is called "Self Control" as you can tell the kids are all eager to dig into Nana's Christmas tree cinnamon rolls. Why is it so hard to get a good shot of the family?? And if that isn't hard enough we say, "ok kids now we're going to take another with Nana and Pop..." (Pop so graciously wears his grandson's engineer hat for his little granddaughter and still they don...

  2 days before Christmas, Scott was talking with our son and he mentioned how he asked Santa for a remote control Lighting Mcqueen car.  OK here's a slight problem because we hadn't gotten him a remote control one.   I had just gotten him a little matchbox size mcqueen car for his stocking (because Santa does the stockings at our house).  So, I went out to Target on Christmas Eve to try to find a remote control Lighting Mcqueen car, with no such luck.   I still wasn't too worried about it until that evening at church a friend told us how our son had told him that he had asked Santa for a remote control Lightning Mcqueen car.  YIKES... now it has come up quite a few times.... ya know a few days notice and I could have ordered it on amazon.  After leaving out milk and cookies for Santa (as well as Christmas cards which they made for him) and sprinkling reindeer food on the back lawn,  we read through Luke 2 and put the kids to slee...

Last night the kids helped me decorate a birthday cake for Jesus and after singing Him Happy Birthday, followed by a few favorite Christmas carols, we enjoyed cake and ice cream.  Apparently, it is an unwritten rule in our house that when you eat Jesus' birthday cake, you don't need to use silverware. 

After dressing the children in their finest, and forcing them to pose for pictures in front of the tree, we went to church this evening for the Christmas Eve services. When one of our pastors got up to read Scripture, he said he would be reading from John 1.  My son leaned over to me and said, "Mom, I thought the story was in Luke 2."   This was probably one of my favorite quotes from the evening. We took our son to the candle light service, while the girls were in the nursery.  This was the first time our son had ever attended a candle light service. Watching the candle light service through the eyes of a four year old boy was quite amusing.  We had the following whispered  conversations during the church service. Son: "When are we going to light the candles?" Me:  At the end. Son: Do they say abracadabra? Me:  No, you'll see a few minutes later Son: So will the whole church be lit up on fire? Me: not exactly.... Thankfully, we made it...

Isn't it amazing how something so simple can trigger a memory so deep?  You hear a song from your past and suddenly you can feel all those emotions and feelings you felt so long ago...it's like it just propels you back in time. Yea... Faith Hill does that to me. When Scott and I were dating in college, I spent one memorable Thanksgiving at his family's home.  That evening we were sitting around the dining room table playing Rummikub when I remembered that the Faith Hill TV special was on that evening, and I commented on that fact.  His mom then turned the TV on in the kitchen so we could listen to it while playing the game.  I saw that her husband Tim McGraw was on stage with her and commented something to the effect of, "Oh, this is the song she sings with her husband Tim McGraw, I love this song." I thought they were singing the song, " It's Your Love ."  (don't roll your eyes..I know it's a sappy love song, what can I say, I was young,...

We decided to take a spontaneous trip to DC this Saturday.  And by spontaneous, I really mean spontaneous.  When we left the house we were deciding between a trip to Hersheypark or the local train garden and drive through light display.  Basically, we were looking for a fun evening out enjoying some holiday cheer.  As we were driving, we got the idea of going into DC to see the National Christmas Tree.  And to top it off, we thought we'd take the metro in so the kids could "ride a train underground." After our ride in, we grabbed dinner at the food court in the post office pavilion, but unfortunately at 6:00 on a Saturday, it was pretty much closed, so we paid way to much for what was basically microwaved hot dogs (though the kids ate every bite) and walked about 3 blocks to the White House.  Things were off to a great start... fun ride on the metro, kids favorite food for dinner, walk in the city in freezing cold weather...by the time we got to the tree,...

As we were getting ready to go to the tree lighting ceremony downtown my son asked, "Mom, can I tell Santa that he is not what Christmas is all about?" I love that as we anticipate Christmas, my kids know that we are preparing to celebrate Jesus' birth.  Yes, they know we are going to have presents under the tree, and they even sat on Santa's lap at Scott's work party, but when I asked my son what he likes best about Christmas, he answered, "celebrating Jesus' birthday."  This warms my heart, because the lights, the tree, the songs, the cookies, the presents, the pageants...all of them are meaningless traditions without Christ.      But it's about much more than just the Christ child being born in the stable.  Because without the cross that too would be meaningless.  If you'll bear with me, I have yet another video clip to share.  I'll put the lyrics below so you can read them as well.  This song was on the Go Fish Christmas CD I...

When I was little if you wanted to make my mom mad, all you had to do was ask her who was visiting when she was cleaning house.  Oh how I remember the look she'd get on her face when I would say that....seems my turn has come... After decorating our cookies yesterday, I realized it was time to deep clean my kitchen.  Once I scrubbed down the icing covered counter, it only made me realize how scummy the other counters looked.  This lead to me doing a deep clean of all my counter tops.  I'm talking take everything off of the counter, move it and wipe down the whole thing.  Yea...that level of cleanliness rarely happens.  Because when it does, it seems like I suddenly become a little OCD. Things that never bothered me before suddenly stick out as I clean one area which then leads to another and before you know it, I'm scrubbing the inside of the door of my dishwasher... So this morning my OCD cleaning fest was still going strong and I found myself scrubbing the stove top.  My ...

I'll just go ahead and admit that I am a big bloggy dork, because since Megan first mentioned her Sharing Christmas carnival , I have been eagerly looking forward to it.  Yes, I even wrote it in on my calendar.  The idea is to share your home at Christmas.. kinda like an Open House... only you get to go in your PJ's and you don't have to struggle to find small talk (yea, can't tell I am an introvert, can you)? So, welcome to my home... I feel kinda weird about showing pictures of the front of my house.  So, I'll just show you our new blow up nativity which sits in front of our house.  We also have our house and door outlined in white lights with icicle lights on the top of the house. When you step inside the door, you see "Frosty" by our coat rack. This is the table in our entry way.  As much as I hate clutter on my entry table, most of the time, though,  it looks like this (just keeping it real)! . Our living room is the heart of our home....