Saturday, December 7, 2013

Christmas 2013 Decorating

The girls and I always look forward to decorating every Christmas season and having Asher "help" us this year added a new element of "interesting" to the mix. He loved looking at each ornament he put on the trees and found just the right spot for each one. He's the best Christmas gift our family received this year! ;-)


The kid's ornaments for this Christmas just came in the mail! I love them - perfect representations of last year!




"Hello! Who are you?!"

I love our new Advent banner! You can read about it here.


Asher loved having his own tree in his bedroom.

We decorated it with beads and ornaments from Uganda.



The tree topper is a nativity set made from banana bark - one of our special finds from Uganda.


You'll never guess which stocking is Asher's ;-)

A nativity set Steve bought me while we were in UG adopting Asher



Stocking made by my mother

My stocking from when I was a kid made by my mother


Ready for Christmas cards & photos!



Ready for more Christmas cards & photos!




"Peace on Earth" banner I made a few years ago




I loooove homemade Christmas gifts!

I painted this for the girls several years ago. I guess I need to make one for Asher now ;-)

My mother-in-law made this beautiful wall hanging for me last year. I love it so much!

Sweet dreams, little one ;-)

Friday, December 6, 2013

Loving Our New Advent Banner

My friend, Allie, is adopting from Uganda and from the same babies home that we adopted from, as well. She is super creative and is selling printable digital art that she has created on the computer to raise $ to cover their adoption expenses. I just purchased her Christmas Scripture cards which we will use as an Advent Calendar of sorts.

Each card is printed in bold colors on card stock. This side shows the Scripture verses...


And on each backside is a different idea to do a random act of kindness for someone else that day. F-U-N!!!


I decided to make ours sort of like a banner or garland so I first took some thin brown lace and glued it to miniature clothes pins. I then hot glued buttons to the tops of each one...


Then I just pinned them in the order that I liked to twine & added a few fabric scraps knotted every so often...





Easy shmeasy - we look forward to using it this Christmas season! Allie has all kinds of super cute Scripture and Christmas art, so please help them raise $ to bring home their sweet little girl & check out her Etsy store here.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Thanksgiving 2013

Thanksgiving Feast at Asher's Parent's Day Out...




Visit with my sister, her boys, and my mom (wish I had more pics!)...



 

Asher watching the Thanksgiving Parade on TV...


Kenz and Abby ran in the Owasso YMCA Hog Jog 5K...


Breakfast (these are actually really good!)...



Thanksgiving lunch at Steve's parents & fall fun with extended family...

















The drive home after a fun day...


And the day wasn't over just yet! The girls wanted to go do some Pre-Black Friday shopping. It was crazy but fun!


We have so many blessings to be thankful for this Thanksgiving!

Monday, November 25, 2013

Asher's New Do

We've been growing out Asher's hair for a while now so we could put little twists/dreads in it. It still looks short but his hair curls up so tight, when you pull out a few strands, it's actually about 3-4 inches long. So we took him to his favorite stylist, Lizzy, recently to see if it was long enough to do the dreads. She said she thought it was & that since his hair is so super curly, it should hold the twists well.

Here's his before shots...




During...




And 2 1/2 hours later, 2 suckers and a breakfast bar eaten, a few tears shed, and lots of time spent on the iPad mini, he had a new do...





I was actually really shocked that he would sit that long but he did great! We think he likes it because when we got home he ran into Abby's room and said, "Abby! Look at my hair!" Then throughout the day he would touch it and smile and say, "My hair!" ;-)

He's "supposed" to sleep with a do-rag on his head but it's typically off by the time he wakes up in the morning...






Perty cute kid, if you ask me ;-)