Friday, December 30, 2011

She is here!!!

After much anticipation, our sweet Harper Joy is here!
Only 5 hours shy of being born on Christmas day, she was welcomed on December 26, weighing in at 6 lbs 08 oz and 18 inches.

She is beautiful and perfect and the most wonderful fit to our family of 6, CRAZY!



A very excited big sister!

A very non interested little brother...

The whole gang!!!






Sunday, December 4, 2011

The Leach Family

I was so excited to get to take some family pictures for our friends the Leach's.





They have such a sweet family and we are so blessed by their friendship!

Friday, December 2, 2011

Thankful Tree/ Advent Calender

For the month of November this year, I decided to do a big Thankful Tree in our entry hallway.

It turned out being so fun and such a reminder all month of all that we have been blessed with. We started with just the tree trunk and then every night everyone would go around and say something to put on a leaf and then hang it up. Everyday was so different, ranging from Family members, to Cookies, to finding our lost toys, it was really sweet. I even put a simple bible verse on top to remind of having a thankful heart, and it was amazing how quickly the kids memorized it. My favorite part was that it was located in a spot that we all walk by many times per day, and listening to the kids run by and say the verse was just awesome!

It really was so easy and so cheap. I just cut out a tree of craft paper and then just cut a bunch of leaves out of construction paper. Each night we just put a piece of painters tape on the back and stuck them on... SO EASY!

I had to add this picture because all Miles does when a camera comes out is walk around saying "CHEEEEESE"- Priceless!

Because the Thankful Tree was such a hit, I decided to keep the idea going with our
Advent Calender/ Christmas Countdown.
I pretty much kept the same concept, just cut out a tree out of craft paper and then cut out ornaments with the numbers 1-25. On the back of each ornament is a bible verse to read at dinner. If you would like a list of the bible verses that I used you can find them HERE. Then we leave it off to help the kids see how much longer till Christmas.
It has helped tremendously with our dinner conversation to be intentional and purposeful about reminding the kids what we are truly celebrating this season.

Please excuse the awful pictures, the tree is in a narrow
hallway and it was very difficult to get a good shot.

I am well aware that I could have gone crazy with making the tree super cute and cut all the ornaments out on my silhouette and scrapbooking paper, however, I chose to keep it simple.
Most of all, so that it would be done before the new baby arrives.