Fun with Ephraim and Selah..and their parents :)

The Arnolds spent New Years Eve with us, and we had a great time!  We mostly hung out at our house, though we did venture downtown to go to the carousel at the waterfront.  Unfortunately it was closed, but all was not lost.  We made a stop Starbucks while we were down there.  :)

I tried my hand at homemade French bread for dinner and it was a hit!  Okay, that's a completely random bit of information, but I was proud of myself.

It was fun to watch the three kiddos interact.  What cuties!

Selah (9.5 mo.), Judson (14 mo.), and Ephraim (33 mo.)

I think we were trying to get Judson to give Selah a kiss here...

And our best shot of all three kids, which happened to be the first one I took...  :)

Our Third and Final Christmas Celebration

We celebrated Christmas with the Renningers on New Years Day.  Judson was spoiled, of course.  He got his first Tonka truck, a dinosaur flashlight that roars (light and roaring are two of his favorites!), and the cutest little Converse shoes that are sort of like slip-ons, but have some hidden Velcro for keeping them on.  They'll be perfect for this spring and summer!

We're so thankful to have so many people who love us!

He was more into opening presents this time around.

As soon as he opened this old school puppy, he took off with it.  He'd just started dragging anything and everything he could possibly move around the house, so this is perfect!  Plus it's got a long enough cord that it's actually fun to pull.  (Most toys these days have a cord that's about six inches long.  I understand it's a safety thing, but it makes them no fun at all, because they don't even stay on the ground.)

 

The beloved dinosaur flashlight

Christmas Craftiness

In the fall, I happened across a craft blog that had an idea I loved and thought I could actually pull off.  It was a set of six different picture frames, all painted black, each with a letter of a different font on different, autumn-inspired scrapbooking paper.  They spelled "AUTUMN."  I never bookmarked the blog and since it was linked from a couponing e-mail I got, I couldn't ever find it again.  It was an easy concept, however, and I decided to make some sets for Christmas projects.  Eventually I found the blog again after I'd already started my "WINTER" frames.  By then, the blogger had also created winter frames and I actually liked mine better (I think the silver frames are more wintery than black).  I gave a lot of sets as Christmas gifts and they seemed to be well-received.  I figured "Winter" would be a good decoration for January and February, since winter's only just begun when Christmas is over.

And if you are interested in seeing where my inspiration came from, click here.  If you scroll down, you can see her winter ones too.  (I used my Cricut to cut the letters and it was really easy.  The hard part was getting the cartridge that had a lot of different fonts, but that's too long of a story to go into.  It involves a bad Ebay transaction and me eventually ending up with TWO cartridges...)  It really was an easy project, though of course it took much longer than I'd anticipated.  :)

Christmas Day

We had a wonderful Christmas Day.  Anna's brother, Jake, and his girlfriend, Shayla, joined us for a delicious breakfast and then we started with our stockings.  (We usually do stockings before breakfast, but we were all hungry by the time Morgan and everyone got there...)  Judson napped through breakfast and stockings, which worked out pretty well.

Once again, there are way too many pictures...

Breakfast table

The Christmas train my dad worked very hard to create.  Judson loved it.  He'd say, "Hi!" as it came around and then "Bye, bye" a second later as it left. :)

 

Jake and Shayla

 

 

Sweet Macy came all decked out in her "First Christmas" attire.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the entire ensemble, but you get the idea.  :)

The carnage

Judson's "Happy Birthday, Jesus" balloon.  (It didn't say that...that's just what it was.)  He LOVED it.  Unfortunately Macy and Grammie managed to pop it on Christmas.  :)

 

We sure love this girl!  She's SO happy and has the best expressions.

Judson recently started giving kisses.  It's really sweet.  (We gave Macy those socks for Christmas, and they just happened to perfectly match her outfit...)

Such adorable chubby legs

 I was so bummed that we didn't ever get around to taking a whole group picture.  We also never took a picture of the kiddos in their snowman pajamas.  Oh, well.  I insisted we take the following two pictures right before we drove back to Salem on the night of the twenty-eighth.  Hence, Judson was already in his pajamas.  Oh, well...