My Favorite Valentine's Tradition

There was lots of love in the air at our house this week!

We've had a fun few weeks getting ready for Valentine's Day. On February 1, we pulled out our Valentine's mailboxes from last year and got busy writing  "I love you because" notes to each other. The kids have been so excited to watch their mailboxes slowly fill up, and they couldn't wait to read their notes on Valentine's morning!

On the morning of the 14th, they found their mailboxes next to a few small gifts (mostly edible) at their place at the table. They pulled out their stacks of cards and started reading through the list of what their family members love about them.

It was so precious to see their faces as they read their notes. I helped Sarah Claire read hers, and each time I read one, she would get down from her chair and go give the sender of the note a big hug. So sweet!

While the "I love you" notes were definitely the highlight of the morning, the kids were also excited about these marshmallow lollipops. Nothing says Happy Valentine's Day like a tennis-playing lamb and a weightlifting hippo!

Daddy missed the Valentine's festivities while he was out at a breakfast meeting, but he got to read his cards as soon as he got got back.

It was a sweet, sweet day. We got to go out on a Valentine's date a day early while some sweet friends kept our kids, so we spent the actual Valentine's evening together as a family, eating heart-shaped homemade pizzas and watching Beauty and the Beast. I'm so grateful for the special people that I get to love!

Desert Fun

We had a fun family adventure in the desert yesterday. It was a beautiful day and a holiday here, so we decided to spend the afternoon climbing, running and playing out at the big national park area that's near us.

The kids climbed and explored and found lots of interesting things. And they threw rocks. Lot and lots of rocks.

Especially this guy. When it comes to rock-throwing, he's the family expert.

 Sarah Claire did a pretty good job of keeping up with the other two...

when she wanted to!

 Hooray for open spaces and sunshine and no horns honking or people shouting!
It's such a blessing to have this place nearby.

Remembering 2012 (with captions by Lee Anna)

Happy New Year!

I always get kind of nostalgic this time of year. I love thinking back over all the things that have happened since last January 1, remembering the surprises and the adventures and the challenges. And I also love to look ahead, dreaming about the year to come and all that it will hold.

This year, Jason came up with a fun new way to remember our 2012. He suggested that we look through our family photos from 2012 and choose our top ten favorites. We looked for photos that captured something special about our year--a special event, a fun memory or just a sweet photo from a regular day. As you might imagine, we had some difficulty narrowing it down to ten, but we finally chose these as our favorites from the year.

Lee Anna helped choose them, and then volunteered to also write the photo captions. So here they are, our Top Ten 2012 Family Photos! Lee Anna's captions are in bold directly under the photos (my comments are in italics underneath).

 Okay this is my favorite of all the photos because it's cute!

(flower girl Sarah Claire listening to her Uncle Gary sing at Aunt Claire's wedding)

 Okay this one was all about Sawyer's birthday party
which happened to be very angry birdsy!

 This one was delicious because it was entirely made of Oreos! 

(homeschool fun making phases of the moon)

 I enjoyed swimming this summer even though I did not enjoy wearing a swim cap.

 I love the beach!

 I had fun at trunk or treat with Mimi and Papaw
and also my candy weighed 4.6 pounds!

 This one is just plain cute!

 Okay I have nothing to do with this one so I think I will let mommy write about it.

(fully enjoying our trip to the states this fall!)

I love this one!

(so grateful for the grandparent time the kids had this year!)

This one I also like because it was taken at the park where we get cotton candy!

(a family photo taken near the heart of our city)

We hope your 2012 was also full of sweet memories,
and we wish you a joyful new year! Welcome, 2013!

Christmas Decor

Since most of you didn't get to visit our house during the holidays this year, I thought I would post some photos of some of my favorite Christmasy spots around the house.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Morning

We had a wonderful Christmas morning! 

We started with a sweet family time reading through our entire Advent Book (singing Christmas carols as they fit in with the story), and then had the kids bring their shepherds pouches and empty them in front of the manger. They have worked hard all month earning money to put in their pouches, and they were excited to see how much they had collected together. We combined all of the money, with a matching amount from Mom & Dad, and used it to support some local charities that we know and admire.

Then it was time to give our gifts for each other! Again this year, Lee Anna very thoughtfully made personal, homemade gifts for each of us. She followed up last year's Sir Sawyer with a new adventure about her brother, Cowboy Sawyer! 

And this year she also wrote a book for Sarah Claire. She chose a theme she knew her sister would love--puppies in a pet shop!

It's a sweet book, perfect for a preschooler, that even includes some activity pages at the back. It has already been requested as a read-aloud by Sarah Claire several times this week, and I'm sure there will be many, many more readings of Barky and Friends.

They were also excited about their other gifts, like Lee Anna's new jogging suit and Sawyer's new Wii game (the reason for the intense I-don't-even-realize-I'm-sticking-my-tongue-out concentration).

And we are all having a blast with this new marble track! I have wanted to get them one of these for a few years, and I was so excited when we found a good deal on one earlier this month. We have already spent hours building and rebuilding different tracks and just watching those marbles roll all over the place. I think this might be one of my favorite kid toys ever. I might have even gone in Sarah Claire's room to play with it once or twice when there were no kids around.

And yes, these Nerf guns were a hit, too! Sawyer was recently introduced to the world of Nerf at a friend's house, so he is beyond excited that now we can have Nerf wars at our house, too. I'm pretty sure that we are going to find Nerf darts EVERYWHERE when we get ready to move out of here, but I love seeing how much fun they're having! They spent a good deal of time doing target practice yesterday, first aiming at some darts that were stuck on the door, which of course resulted in lots more darts stuck on the door!

After a while, Daddy redirected them to a new target--King Tut's nose! One of our history books has a lovely photo of King Tut on the front, so they spent a good while trying to stick a dart on his shiny gold nose.

The rest of the day seems to have gone largely unphotographed, but we got to skype with family, and had several friends come by to visit. We are so grateful for sweet family memories and most of all for the gift of Christmas!

Christmas Smiles

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Christmas Fun!

We are getting into the Christmas spirit around here...

and we've got the matching outfits to prove it!

Here are a few of the things we've been doing to celebrate the season:

We made our annual Christmas countdown chain on Dec. 1. I can't believe how few links are left already!

In the photo above the chain, the kids are listening to Mimi read them a chapter from The Best Christmas Pageant Ever over skype. They loved hearing that story, definitely a family favorite!

The gingerbread playdough has gotten hours and hours of playtime since we made it last week. I'm so glad when they pull it out because it makes the house smell so good!

Each child decorated a picture frame ornament to put on our Christmas tree. I'll try to post a shot of the finished products soon.

And, after they had made dozens and dozens of playdough gingerbread cookies, it was time for the real thing!

 Everyone helped mix up our gingerbread dough, and they all took turns decorating the little men.

It was quite a creative and varied collection of gingerbread "townspeople," as Lee Anna called them.

We are reading through our Advent book, as we have in years past, and hearing a little more of the story each night as we get closer to the 25th. I'm so grateful for the chance to see and experience the story through the eyes of these sweet children.