Uhh...Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year?!

Hey fellow Homebodies!

You know who you are;)  Well let's just say I want to be more of one!  Whew can you believe Christmas AND all the New Year celebrations have already come and gone.  I have really mixed emotions about it all.  It comes and goes so quickly yet it is such a busy time of year that I'm often glad it's over.  I think it's the traveling thing that makes it rough right?  Or traveling with 3 kids hyped up on sugar and way to many toys maybe that's the kicker.  Either way we made lots of memories this year with our immediate little fam, friends and the rest of our family as well!  Our little man who's 5 almost broke my heart the other day when he said "You know that song that came on at the end of Polar Express?"(I'm not sure what the song is) "well it made me cry a little bit when I heard it because I'm so sad that the best Christmas ever is over."  Ah you remember that wonderful magical feeling as a kid right?  I still get a little twinge of it and I am so blessed to get to experience it again through the eyes of our kids.  It's awesome!

So in an effort to get back on the blogging bandwagon I am going to share a few pics of the memories we made this year with you and then some of that fun but less important but oh so fun "housey" stuff that we all love will be in the works!


We always start things out with lots of Christmas light lookin!
This wasn't our first adventure this season but I just love this pic of the beautiful lights in Johnson City that we try to take in every year.  Can you imagine getting to run around underneath all of those lights as a kid?  I hope ours will remember it forever.

We did a little decorating.  We kept it super simple and as minimized as possible this year in the rent house.  The thought of digging around in our "to capacity" garage didn't sound like fun.  Honestly it has been years since I bought any Christmas stuff so I guess for me I did splurge on the stuff to make that simple little garland. 

We did some more christmas light looking.  In Austin you never know what people are going to light up!   

This is a horrible phone pic but that's a little moped or whatever you call them...I lost the word..  

Then Bitty Baby turned 2!

She gets to start the gift opening early!

More lights!  This is the Johnson city trip with our three little goofballs.

Posers 

Our son loves to reenact things.  Can you guess the movie?

 Super random dress up and dance to Christmas music moments...Little dude has on a girly bib that I put wrong side up to act as his apron for baking cookies.

Getting their bake on..

 We did not attempt pretty cookies this year.  It was all about just letting them do it all!

We attempted to take pictures for a Christmas card and the process was true to form.  E dressed herself and then had no desire to participate and hubs and I tried to grin and bare it in hopes that out of 50 pics we could get a half decent one.  Well if you usually get a Christmas card from us you know the results;)  We weren't looking for perfect but there weren't even any amusing ones that we wanted to send.  So we just excepted the idea that our friends and family knew we wished them a Merry Christmas and went on our merry way.

I love the way little dude is looking up at me in this one.  Like he is thinking "good luck mom".

We did even more baking

Oh for the love of sugar...

and more light looking...there is so much to look at and so little time.  Bitty Baby ain't so sure about that creepy Santa behind her daddy.

I love this sweet one of the kids admiring the manger scene

It was cold(for us) and the kids were loopy!  You see that sign on the lower right?  Yes we are in Texas and it does say "Never mind the dog Beware of the owner"

Can you believe there was even more baking? No wonder my pants don't fit.  I didn't realize how much we did this!

I never want to forget those sweet little frosting fingers

Little dude's philosophy is E you decorate I'll eat...

hey look here we did do something besides bake and eat cookies...The santa hat was a part of little dudes wardrobe this year.

My mom and all her craftiness sent the kids this felt tree to decorate and redecorate as they pleased.

And then I wore it to our friends tacky Christmas party because well...I'm tacky like that!

We sprinkled reindeer dust on the lawn

Love the delight in little dudes eyes here!

We opened a gift before going to bed to wait for Santa

We did our Christmas morning free for all

Then headed out on a road trip to see some of our family in west Texas

and would you believe we were almost the only part of the country to have a white Christmas!  It was beautiful!

We paid visits to the grandparents..

I love bitty baby's determination here

Got tons of Rapunzel and Tinker Bell stuff

and of course some good ol' boy shoot em up stuff

played in the snow a lot more

and of course ate it for good measure

We also went to my aunt and uncles to visit more family...I love this pic of bitty baby for some reason.  The tights and boots always win me over.

and then we bid farewell to west Texas and headed back home to put up our new trampoline! 

No pics of that yet for some reason...Actually it's because I'm usually jumping too;)

But you wanna know one of the things I have been looking forward to about the holidays or really the "post holiday" season?  De cluttering!!!  It's that time of year again when you get totally overwhelmed with stuff (especially if you have kids) and if we don't control it....It controls us so it feels so good to all go through our things and decide what to donate.  Here is some of the damage that we did.  Can you believe all this stuff?  What is crazy is we are not huge consumers.  Like we don't really buy stuff often.  Especially kid stuff.  So how on earth does this happen?  

Who knows but it does and I am glad to have it gone.  Of course now it has been replaced with new stuff from Christmas that we will donate next year.  

I hope you and your family had a festive and meaningful Christmas and remembered the reason we celebrate at this time of year.  Here is to the goal of simplifying and focusing on the most meaningful things every day!