Home for Christmas

My brother whose in the Army and just got back from 15 months in Iraq is coming home with his family for the holidays!!!! They are getting here Friday! Oh, and my sister-in-law got pregnant on his first day home. Hmmm. I bet there will be a new generation of Baby Boomers thirty or forty years from now. :-) The song "I'll be home for Christmas" has extra meaning this year.

Winter warmth

Our son's 15th birthday was yesterday. I really can't believe it. How can he get older while I stay the same age? It doesn't make sense. Oh wait.
Ahem. Anyway, I'm not doing a big long post about him and his wonderful qualities because he doesn't want me to. Imagine that...a fifteen year old boy being sensitive about what I put into blogosphere.
But one thing I will share is that he LOVES Christmas. It is his FAVORITE time of year. I didn't realize how much he loved it until he started watching old Christmas home videos A LOT and talking about the smells and sights of Christmas A LOT and wanted to listen to Christmas music starting in September A LOT. But what really told me was that all he wanted for his birthday was money toward an I-Pod, breakfast lunch and dinner from Taco Bell, and to put up the Christmas decorations. We did that Sunday when he and BD got home from our church's men's retreat.
So now our decorations are up and I am amazed at what a mood-lifter they are, for Baylee (11) especially. She struggles with moodiness. Sigh. I wish I could say she doesn't get it from me, but...Well, yesterday she woke up happy and was happy all day, staring at the tree and doing her work (even the dreaded math assignment) happily under it's branches. Maybe we should leave it up all year.
Anyway, I digress. Christmas music and putting up the decorations, along with the colder weather is usually bittersweet for me because it marks the beginning of the saddest time of year for me...winter. This year, I couldn't help thinking about last year at this time, probably the lowest time emotionally I've ever had. I was talking to my sister about last winter and how I didn't even realize how depressed I really was, and she said we never realize how bad it is until we are feeling better and look back on it. All that to say that I am feeling SO MUCH BETTER this year (and I just turned 40!) than I was last year. For the first time, I am NOT dreading the cold and the dark. God's love and faithfulness is all around me, making me warm. I look at my children's faces and I feel warm. I feel my grandmother's lips on my cheek and I feel warm. My mother smiles at me, my dad hugs me, my sisters laugh with me and I feel warm. My husband does something little for me, like buying me a firelog or cleaning the kitchen, and I feel warm. Some friends of mine wrote posts recently about the five senses and things they love experiencing with those gifts. Lovely posts and reading them makes me feel warm. I may have selfishly turned a post around from talking about my kids to talking about me, but right now I just have to praise God for feeling warm and light inside!

Yay!

I am generally pretty healthy, but bad backs run in my family and mine goes out on me periodically, knocking me onto the couch for a good week or two at a time. Such was the case several days ago and when that happens, I get pretty down. It's tough to be the perfect wife and mother when I can barely get into a standing position. I mean, after all, I'm not just a housewife, I'm a conversationalist; receptionist; nurse; short-order cook; maid; social secretary; gourmet chef; chauffeur; drill sergeant; negotiator; tutor; event planner; laundress; encourager; professional shopper; money manager; teacher; disciplinarian; costume designer; knee-kisser; curfew-enforcer, playmate, master scheduler, heartbeat of the home; etc...

Why do I bring this up? Welllll (deep breath), my pal, Mamarazzi, hosted this way cool thing called "Mamarazzi's Favorite Things Swap". Little did I know what this would mean until a big, fat envelope arrived, addressed to ME!!! And the address wasn't written by a computer. Oh no, my address was written by a PERSON! And it arrived at just the right time to lift spirits that were sorely dragging. Let me just share the wonderful things my "Swap Partner" at What's Next Girls? sent my way:


A wonderful magazine, five of her favorite winter recipes, a tube of her favorite coffee-flavored lip gloss, The Memory Keeper's Daughter (which I'm really enjoying), two CDs of her favorite Christmas music, and my favorite thing of all (and not just because she made me look so skinny on the front), a gorgeous altered notebook...

Note how she put my head on a super-skinny body! Guaranteed to warm any girl's heart!

Inside front

Inside back

Back

You should have heard the squeals and exclamations as my girls and I revealed item after item. I haven't received something so fun in the mail for as long as I remember. Thanks so much, swap partner! You know who you are!!!

October is a busy month!

In the month of October, we have 8 birthdays and anniversaries in our family. October 16th was BD's 39th birthday, the 17th was our 16th anniversary, and the 19th was my 40th birthday. Yes, the time has come for me to admit to being 40, but since I feel better than I have in a long time, I don't mind!

For our anniversary, BD made bacon-wrapped filet mignon with pasta in garlic cream sauce with fresh tomatoes and grilled asparagus. Izzi and my niece decorated the table...it was soooo nice!





For my birthday, my peeps took me to breakfast at a really quaint place...they know going out for breakfast is one of my favorite things to do.


It was a gorgeous, sunny early Fall day and my sistas and I ran across the street to the town square where there was a scarecrow contest for all the local businesses.


That night, my mom had a dinner for me and BD. My BFF Toni showed up as a surprise, and Mom had a turtle cheesecake for desert for me.


But the fun didn't stop there. BD surprised me with a night in the Canterbury hotel in downtown Indianapolis. The weather was perfect; sunny and low seventies. We walked from the beginning of the canal to the end and back, as well as walking around the Circle City Mall where we did some shopping, and wrapped up the evening with dinner at one of our favorite restaurants that was across the street from our hotel. Walking for hours downtown in the sunshine is one of my favorite things to do.

The Circle.

The next day we went to Einstein's for breakfast. I had never been there and it was the BEST coffee I'd ever had! The Autumn Roast tasted like Fall in a cup. It was like drinking images of nuts and pumpkins and falling leaves and golden sunshine! The weather was PERFECT again...what a marvelous Autumn we've had!

It's hard to see, but this is Einstein's.

I had a wonderful birthday...God has blessed truly blessed me!

Late Sunday Scrapping

I scrapped five pages this week. Here are four:

This first one is the doodle page I made in black and white, then colored it in and added a picture. I made it as a sample for my doodling class. I would not normally have used one small picture on a large page.

These are some of my favorite pictures...in fact, I'd like to get 12x12 frames and put them in our living room.

After I made the layout of my daughter Izabella, my other daughter Baylee wanted one like that too. So I just used random pictures of her and made this page.

I'll actually post a normal post soon. :-) Oh, I hurt my back, so can't do the cartwheel at the gas station that my wonderful husband he insists on. Shoot.

Sunday Scrappin'

I've been participating for a while in this cool meme where people share their craft ta-das and to-dos for the week because I just love to scrapbook. Go here to check out lots of other awesome creations...


I don't usually do the weekly challenges even though I think they're neat, but for me it's just simpler to keep plugging away on my own family photo pages. This week, I was looking through this old album I keep where I just throw old pictures that I haven't scrapped. They are in no particular order, nor are they labeled. Anyway, I found twelve miscellaneous baby/toddler pictures of our youngest daughter (she just turned ten on Wednesday) and thought I'd make a page just for fun and to practice my doodling skills since I'm going to be teaching it in January. I just used black 12X12 cardstock, cropped the pictures, matted them with white cardstock, and added miscellaneous flower stickers and images I'd cut from magazines. Then I doodled vines and swirls with a white pen and added details to the flowers themselves with both white and black pens. So it was very cost effective---just two ink pens, some cardstock, and flowers. The layout turned out really artsy and it was so much fun to do!


There's our little Izabella. She's so sweet and adds so much beauty to our life. We are so proud and pleased to be her parents!