The Holidays

I missed, um, like 2 months of blogging from November January. If there is ever a break in my blogging its because life is a little hairy and the blog is one thing that is easy to let go of. In this case, we were scrunching down figuring out some money issues and I was having a tough time with my former job. After a lot of worrying, tears, and talking it into the GROUND, we were able to make the decision that I was going to quit and use the Christmas break to apply for new jobs. I was also able to get Max's new school to put his account on hold over the Christmas break so that I wasn't paying for preschool while Rylan and I were sitting at home. We we made those decisions, and 9,000,000 pounds of stress left my shoulders and I was able to calm down and really enjoy being home with my kiddos and seeing my family. I am so lucky that our life allowed us to be able to make this decision. Many people in my position would not been able to do that and for that I am eternally grateful.

Even though I've already done the New Years blog, I felt it a must to blog about our Christmas.

I have pretty crappy pictures from a very fun and eventful trip to Fayetteville Square to see the Christmas lights. We had our niece Marley and nephew Wil with us and, seriously, the Fayetteville Square is gawgeous at Christmas.

Because Christmas=camel rides

We employed our favorite photography team, Marley and Wil to attempt a Christmas pic of the family. I think they did fabulous. Unfortunatelylife got hairy (see above) and I didn't get a pic out. Oh well. Yay for a new facebook pic!

Santa came to the gym! When the flyers came out, I thought for sure it would be maybe a trainer with the fake beard and a pillow up the suit. Nope, this Santa was legit AND brought the MRS. The boys were so excited!

The one reason to let Mariah Carey stay in America

I let the kids decorate the tree and all the ornaments were in a 2 ft by 2 ft area. It was magical.

Favorite new park

And then? The usual sickness happened. In the same week, Rylan andI got the stomach flu followed by Max getting a terrible fever virus that turned into an ear and sinus infection.

I love watching Christmas movies. One of our money saving techniques was to ditch satellite, so we missed out on the usual Christmas movies that are on every night, but luckily we had Christmas Vacation and Elf on DVD, so we started some new traditions. Side note: next year fast forward through a few parts that are not appropriate for little eyes. Like the lady taking her clothes off in Clark Griswold's dream. Whoopsie.

Christmas Eve and day we went to my parents house. There was cooking and hiking and present opening. It was awesome.

After Christmas, I had one more week before I started work and Rylan went back to school. We made "paney cakes" from the Mickey Mouse Maker that Max got from Aunt Staci, Uncle Chad and fam.

We went to Chuck E Cheez and Max kept a wall between he and Chuck.

Zoe came over and helped Rylan learn to ride his new scooter

I went through a period during December where I wasn't very fun to be around.  Christmas brought everything back into perspective. We have a great family. We love each other so much. We celebrated Jesus' birth. We remembered the reason for the season.