Christmas 2014

We had such a wonderful holiday. Christmas Eve was amazing with so much family nearby. We all gathered for an early dinner and a nativity afterwards. I though I had more pictures of the nativity but I can only find one where Emery was Mary. We did it a few times and the first time my cousin and her husband were Mary and Joseph because they have a brand new baby boy. It was so adorable. But Emery had been begging to be Mary for awhile so we did it again and let the kids change up costumes. Emery was such an attentive Mary, it was beautiful to watch. She also got to ride the donkey (good sport award goes to Tobin!) and Gavin was Joseph. My favorite costume was my little niece Hanna, she was the impromptu sheep with a big white t-shirt stuffed with batting. She looked like a little white roly-poly! It was hilarious.

After everyone left we opened up jammies from Grandma and Grandpa and put Emery to bed. Then Gavin and I got to work! We still hadn't finished her present from us. We felt like Christmas Elves, hammering and sawing away. It was fun.  I'll show the before and after in the next post.

I don't love taking pictures during things...which explains why I only have phone pictures, and just a few terrible ones. I just like to live in the moment and not be so worried about taking pictures that I'm missing whats actually going on. But it's so fun to go back and look at the pictures...so maybe it's worth it...I don't know the balance yet. The above picture is just a few minutes too late, a lot of Emery's presents were opened as she sat with one arm around Gavin's neck, hugging him, and the other unwrapping. It was so cute, but of course she stopped when I went to snap a picture.

Christmas Day we had Gavin ALL TO OURSELVES! He's been really busy at work lately so it was awesome having him for a whole day. We played with presents, went to the park and on a walk, watched a movie, and just enjoyed being all together. It was our best Christmas yet!

Lemonade Stand

Here's the before and after pictures of our Christmas present for Emery this year. Our friend was throwing this thing away...gosh...it's probably been 6 or 7 months ago (maybe longer!) and Gavin said he wanted it. So it sat in our garage FOREVER. Collecting dust and driving me crazy because I didn't know what to do with it. Finally inspiration struck and we decided to turn it into a lemonade stand for the play room.

Here's the before:

And here's the final product:

Emery loves it. I like the way it turned out and I think it's a fun addition to our playroom. I think a cute little lemonade sign for the stripes would look nice but it's done for now. And I'm soooo glad it's finally out of our garage!

Ranch-aholic

This was Emery at dinner the other day:

Isn't Ranch over-use a big southern thing? I guess she is becoming more of a Texan than I realized. 

In case you are worried about eating food at my house for fear that we let Emery have free reign and now she has gotten saliva over everything, the bottle was basically empty, we were throwing it away. 

Ice Skating

Emery and I just got back from our whirlwind trip to Idaho a few days ago. I say whirlwind because it always seems to go by much too fast. We did get to see a lot of family this time and it was nice to catch up with my cousins. 

My dad took Natalie, Olivia, Emery and I ice skating one day and it was so fun. I wasn't sure how long Emery would enjoy it, but we lasted for a entire hour...which honestly I thought was pretty good for her. When we first got there all she wanted to do was sit on the ice and play in the little snow that accumulates, but I finally convinced her to skate around (which actually means I push her in this uncomfortable hunch that is kind of back-breaking).

See that hunch? It's worth it I suppose because we really did have fun. 

I had to have my dad take a picture of Emery all bundled up. I thought she looked so squishy and cute. But I'm glad we don't have to do that every day, it feels like so much effort to get in snow clothes just to take them off again.

Scripture Advent

I've been ridiculously productive the last few weeks. It's very exciting. There have been painting projects that have been sitting in my garage FOR YEARS that I finally got done (I'll try to post a picture soon) and I've completed some fun Christmas crafts.

One such craft is an advent I found online (here's the link: scripture advent). I liked it because

1. It was FREEEEEE!
2. It is Christ-focused.

I was looking for some kind of scripture advent to help us focus on Jesus in December and this is perfect. Each day has a topic about Christ, a little blurb about the topic, a list of scriptures, and an activity to do. After you complete the card you flip it over and there's a symbol representing that day.

I printed out the cards and then I had some laminating sheets I stuck them in because I really want this to last.

The green holder came from the dollar store and I just "Christmas-a-fied" it a bit. It makes me happy when I see it. 

I was a little bit sad because Emery is basically indifferent to it, but as I lamented to my mom about it she pointed out that it will be even more fun next year because she'll remember it and be more excited. I might get some kind of small candy to go in it too, just because it's fun. 

Snapshot

I love my days, even if they sometimes get crazy, because I have moments like this:

This is how we walked to pick up Bella from school the other day. This girl makes me smile so big it sometimes squeezes tears out of my eyes. :) I love this "little mommy!"

Christmas is Here!

 Christmas is in full swing here at the Giraud house. We went and bought our tree a week or so ago, put on the ornaments while we rocked out to Christmas music, and we put up the train that Emery got last year for Christmas around the tree.

I've been trying for a YEAR to get Emery to like this train with no luck. But now that it's around the tree (and that Emery's a bit older) she LOVES the train. She's played with it for hours. She really likes to take her princesses for rides:

I can't believe I'm actually getting holiday pictures up on my blog BEFORE a holiday is over. Granted these aren't Christmas DAY pictures, but still. Let's all take a moment to be super proud of me since I'm not making you look at Christmas pictures in March.