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Blog, christmas, holidays, iphone, Month In A Minute, Videos

December Recap


Happy New Year! I don’t really do resolutions, but if I did, I would maybe resolve to take more pictures and videos and improve the quality over the next year. It’s embarrassing fun to see how much my photography has improved from that first low lit, grainy instagram picture. I’m still nowhere near great–but I’ve improved so I’ll take that.

In case you missed my November recap, I started up a project (that I previously did, 3 years ago) where I record 2 second clips from each day and edit them together to make a Month in a Minute video. When I make them, I really don’t think they are anything special. But when we look back at them months or years later, I love seeing tiny glimpses of our days and watching the kids grow up through video.

Here is the video for December–

and because I think my husband is better at making them than I am, here is his version–it’s kind of fun to see our days through another perspective.

And now for our festive December iphone pictures–

I bought this letter board from Letterfolk  and it’s been so much fun to play around with. I’m sure you’ll be seeing it make an appearance quite a bit in pictures.

I know I have a ton of Clementine pictures but Clem and Evangeline are my most willing models. Plus it was her first Christmas–so give me a break 😉

I also hope to be in more pictures with the kids this year. Something I’m working on is being more comfortable with actually looking at the camera. I can’t stand pictures of myself when I’m smiling at the camera but I’m sure the kids don’t want to be left with a ton of pictures of me looking off to the side. So we’ll see if I can work on that.

One night we loaded up the kids to go see Christmas lights past their bedtime. I think that’ll be a special tradition we continue through the years.

This was the second (and last year) that we’ve done these jammies. Next year we will get a new matching set.//Also, the Christmas Eve candlelight service. I’m so glad we decided to keep our Christmas Eve low key the past few years. I love spending the evening at church, singing about the birth of Christ with our church family.

Christmas Sunday outfits! Don didn’t get to go to church with us so that’s why he’s not in the pictures. The first group shot was our first attempt and you can see it didn’t go well. The second one was a small improvement. Oh well, #reallife.

When I find an obsession, I tend to over-obsess until everyone else is sick of it. Leading up to Christmas, Clem’s Santa bonnet was my obsession. Now that this new bonnet has arrived (Black Friday purchase from Stella and Wilbur) you will probably see her wearing it all the time this winter. I won’t apologize. She wears that bonnet so well and I’m completely obsessed!!

Sickness hit our house last week (hence the sleeping Desmond photo above!) but everyone is healthy for now. Since it skipped a few kids, I think we still have more sick days ahead. We are thoroughly enjoying Don’s new day schedule and it’s helping us get through these gloomy post-Christmas days.

Anyway, I hope you have a good week!

**This month was so crazy and I kept forgetting to document the Kids Say quotes. I’ll have some next month!!

Blog, christmas, holidays

Christmas leftovers


I can’t believe we’re already at the end of another year! I know a lot of people have been really hating on 2016 but we actually had a great year! We welcomed Clementine into our family and Don got switched to day shifts after 6.5 years of overnights. Those are the highlights, and of course we’ve had some hard times as well, but I’m so thankful for the answered prayers and happy moments of 2016. And speaking of highlights–here’s my top nine instagram posts from 2016! Can you spot the theme?

But before 2016 is over, I just wanted to share a few more pictures from our Christmas–starting with our Christmas card pictures. This was not our year to print and send out cards but I still wanted to make a “virtual Christmas card.” You can see the exhaustion on my face and the rearranged ornaments on the bottom of the tree, but nothing makes me happier than family pictures.

Please tell me why they can smile so adorably for this picture when all I was doing was setting up the camera for our family picture but they make strange faces when we’re taking the real ones?

Let’s play a game–can you figure out who was not enthused about taking a picture at this moment?

We started a new tradition this year by building gingerbread houses. I thought these tiny houses were adorable. We learned our lesson when we went to build them and realized you’re supposed to assemble the houses 3-4 hours before decorating. But since that was our only free afternoon to build them, we went ahead and let them dry for 11 days before we were finally able to get back to them to decorate. We finished them on Christmas Eve while Don was asleep. Next year we’ll plan better.

I loved seeing their personalities that showed with their creations. Liam’s was all about pattern and perfection. Kai’s was completely covered with sprinkles on every side.

I’m pretty sure Evangeline was totally judging Kai for the amount of sprinkles he was using.

The finished products and their creators. We had so much fun creating new traditions.

Happy New Year’s Eve! I’m so looking forward to seeing what 2017 has in store for us. If everyone stays healthy, we will be celebrating at our church tonight. Pray for me because I’ll have all of the kids while Don is working until 11!! I told the kids that if anyone was sick today, we would be staying home and celebrating the new year at our house. I would put the 3 youngest in bed at their normal bedtime and let the big boys stay up and play games with me as late as they can make it. My heart melted when Kai said he’d rather do that because I “always have to take care of Clem so I don’t get to play games with them.” Looks like we’re scheduling a late night gaming session ASAP!

Happy New Year! See you next year 😉  (hey, moms can make jokes too!)