Blog

Hello friends— a last hello from 2011 and a big anticipating hello of 2012! I don't know about you but the last year has brought, A LOT! Both good and bad (I suppose not unlike every year) but this year the goods were really, REALLY good and the bads seemed kinda really bad- not a lot of bad things personally, but to the people I really care about so it became pretty personal. Anyway, most of us try to take stock at the end/beginning of a new year. So dum, dee, dah, dum: here are my resolutions and To Do's...

Every year there seems to be so much emphasis on the buying and giving of gifts that Andy and I hope to carve out a bit of reality and focus for the girls at Christmas. In our house we celebrate the birth of Christ as the centerpiece to our Christmas and faith. We hope to instill that in our girls. Some of the ways we do that is to anticipate the birth in several ways. First we make sure the fisher-price nativity set is out and the girls have a chance to see all of the people that God used...

We have two traditions that involve light. The first is that we celebrate the advent with our Christmas Pyramid Carousel. We enjoy one in the kitchen and one in the dining room. It is such fun to light the candles and discuss the reason for the season. My husband is a wee bit swedish so it is a fun tradition. We are also lucky that we live in a fantastic old neighborhood in Des Moines called Waterbury. Every year they put out over thousands of luminaries on Christmas Eve, it is just lovely. We usually spend Christmas Eve at Andy's...

Okay so I know some folks do artificial trees but this household is a real tree kind of group. We love the windy open field and finding, "just the right tree." We're usually pretty quick since the place we like to go south of Des Moines has wide open fields and is really, REALLY windy. There are always a lot of joking, laughing, freezing hands, plummber bottom by the boys, yelling of watching-out-for-the-saw to the little girls, and good discussion on how to tie the tree on just the right way so it doesn't blow off the car! We usually...

Some of the ways we get into the holiday spirit and spread a little love and joy is by cooking. It is a tradition that we always make pumpkin bread for the neighbors and since we live on a small street we like to cook for all of the 12! This year we have a few new residents to the street so they will sure be surprised! The past two years Charlotte and I have also been making those awesome hershey kiss cookies too so of course this year is no different. It is such fun giving…watch for tomorrow, we'll...