{ A Shower for Baby Wret }

 When Wret was just over a month old, we had a very special visit from my sister Bethany, whom we affectionately call Auntie B.  It was her first time to meet Wret.  She traveled over for the weekend with my aunt and uncle.  The evening she arrived also happened to be Wret's baby shower!  It was an added blessing to have her here for that.  Here we are getting ready to go.

 I hadn't expected to have a shower, but one of the ladies in our church graciously offered to host one.  It was such a blessing and a much needed time out with friends after being fairly housebound after Wret's arrival.  They combined the shower with another lady from church as well.  It was a lot of fun to have a joint shower!  Because she was having a girl and Wret is obviously a boy, they settled on Dr. Seuss as the theme, a neutral subject.  Such fun!

 I have actually had very little exposure to the Dr. Seuss books, but this shower has definitely peaked my interest.  I can't wait to read them all to my kids.  They made food to represent several books, and they did an amazing job!

 Of course there were many wonderful gifts to open!  Several darling summer outfits and LOTS of childrens books, which I'm thrilled about!

{ My sweet boy }

 { Tessa, the hostess and Laurie the mom-to-be }

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The rest of the weekend we spent with Bethany, playing and just hanging out.  She got lots of snuggles in, too!

 That weekend was also my mom's birthday, so we had everyone up for dinner one day.  It was very special to get to celebrate her special day and the arrival of Wret all at the same time.

 

{ Celebrating Easter }

We didn't really make any plans for Easter this year.  After all, we could very well have been having a baby.  Wret's actual due date was today, April 1.  I am very, very glad he came early, but with recuperating and adjusting to life with a new baby, the festivities kind of took a back seat.  Despite our lack of plans, however, the weekend turned out really nice and I am pretty sure we made some lifelong memories.

 We spent the weekend as our little family.  It was a BEAUTIFUL weekend of warm sunshine.  Saturday morning we took the kids to the Easter egg hunt with our church.  I was feeling pretty sick, having come down with a sore throat/cold the day before, but I didn't want to miss it, and thankfully I felt better after being in the fresh air and sunshine.  The kids had a lot of fun!  It is such a blessing to have gotten to know all of these families at our church over the past year.  We are so thankful for the relationships that have been built during this time and look forward to them growing more over time.

Sunday morning we went to church.  It was pretty crazy getting everyone ready on time, but we made it!!!! Tim and I worked together on our dinner.  We kept it simple, spiral ham, scalloped potatoes and asparagus, with carrot cake for dessert...... from a box!  NOT as good as one from scratch, but it was what I could manage :)

{ Our littlest Easter Egg }

When the kids woke up from their naps we did an egg hunt in the front yard and then took them to the park.  It was a wonderful weekend of celebrating our Risen Saviour!  Happy Easter!

{ Valentine's Day }

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A crazy amount of life has happened in the past couple of weeks, even though it seems at times like we've done little more than recover from the sickness that went through the whole family and kept us home for most of that time. I am very thankful that for the present everyone is finally healthy, with the exception of myself. I have been fighting an earache since Thursday, which came on the heels of a nasty cold. Uuugh! Can't wait for spring and the death of all these bugs!

For Valentine's Day this year I told Tim I would be perfectly happy if we combined the celebration of the day with my birthday, which is exactly a week later.  We decided to go out for dinner the weekend between.  Valentine's Day itself was a still a special day.  I decided to do a sweet little project for Tim that I had seen on Pinterest shortly before (sorry, apparently I didn't pin it, just did it).  I called it a "Passport of Love" and inside are suggestions for weekly dates to restaurants we've never tried of places we haven't gone.  He loved it!  We've already added to it.  It's fun to see how much there is to do in our area that we hadn't thought of before or maybe had, but since it wasn't written down we just haven't gotten around to it.  He woke me on Valentine's morning with a sweet card and a little box of chocolates.  That's another thing, I've suggested that he wait until the day after Valentine's Day if he's going to go all out on buying me flowers or chocolates.  Seriously, why not wait until they are 75% off?

We were all feeling pretty miserable with our colds that day, but we made the best of it.  I helped Oliver make a little craft for Tim to take to his office and I baked a chocolate cake for Tim and I to enjoy after the kids were in bed.  The thing I appreciated most about the day was that, despite the fact that I was blowing my nose every 5 minutes, eyes were watering and my nose was red and that I served leftovers for dinner, love was everywhere.  I realized just how blessed we are to be living a life where the externals don't matter so much because our hearts are right.  Our love is for every day, not just the "day of love".

The following day, Friday, my mom came up for the day and overnight.  I ran off to Winco when she arrived.  Now that I am so far along in my pregnancy my days of hauling both kids along with me are over!  Tim took a short break from work to meet me there and helped load all the groceries into my car.  So wonderful!  Later that afternoon he called me to say his boss was letting them out a little early and since it was such a beautiful day and my mom could watch the kids, did I want to meet him for dinner?  We went to a new Italian restaurant.  They only serve pizza, but they are traditionally italian so it is on the fine dining edge.  The pizzas are served uncut in the traditional style.  They were delicious!  After dinner we browsed an antique store and bought Katy Grace's very first tea set (though we'll have to wait a few years to give it to her) and came home early enough in the evening to spend time with the kids and put them to bed. 

Speaking of kids being in bed, they are both napping so I better get some work done!

{ A Very Merry Christmas }

It seems a little odd to do a Christmas post at this point, but unless I had posted Christmas night, I guess I had to run into this problem! So, here goes one more look back at 2012!

Tim and I both agree that this Christmas season was the best we have ever spent in our lives thus far. That is a bold statement, I know, but it is true! It was truly very rich and fulfilling. I think what I loved most was that we stayed busy with Christmasy things. We were doing something every weekend up until the weekend before Christmas, but it didn't feel busy or hectic, just festive.  Another element that contributed a lot to the richness was having our two little children really beginning to appreciate all that Christmas includes.  There is something truly magical about children at Christmas!

{ this picture is a little fuzzy, but I love it because I think it captures that wonder }

The first weekend of December we spent getting our Christmas tree and decorating.  We also attended our first Christmas party. 

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The following weekend we spent a family Christmas day in the city {here}.

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Tim and I read "A Christmas Carol" together, the first time for both of us.

We watched lots of Christmas movies.

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The following weekend was Katy Grace's first birthday party and our annual Christmas party.  Tim and I were also thrilled to see Handel's Messiah live for the first time!  It was spectacular.  We attended a performance at an historic Catholic church.  It was the perfect setting for such an event.... other than the very hard, wooden benches we sat on for three hours!  We had dinner out together before picking up our littles.  A wonderful Christmas date!

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The Friday before Christmas we invited our long-time family friends over for an early Christmas dinner and presents.  Tim lived with this family for over 10 years in his bachelor days and is Uncle Tim to their kids.  Kurtis and Karli are pretty much the closest thing our kids have to cousins, so they're very special!  We also watched "A Christmas Story".  A must-watch Christmas movie for us.  I mean, we even own "the lamp"!

Then came Christmas!

December 23 will always be a very sweet memory for us.  We spent the evening as a family.  Fire blazing, listening to Bing Crosby on the Victrola, playing carols on my violin, snuggling on the couch, watching the kids play contentedly together.  It was a good old-fashioned feeling.  To top it all off, when we looked outside, it had begun to snow.  It was almost too good to be true!  We went to bed with it still falling and woke up on Christmas Eve to a white winter wonderland!  Truly storybook.

Christmas Eve day, my family came and spent the day with us, including my sister Bethany (Auntie B) who had flown in the night before.  I made brunch: baked omelet, cinnamon rolls, bacon, fresh pineapple and tangerines and of course coffee with plenty of egg nog.  

 Tim was happily able to use his new snow blower for the first time.

Yes, I dressed the kids up as elves on Christmas Eve... just because I could!  They loved it!

Then of course there was snowman building.

The guys started first, while sister watched eagerly from the window.  I love this picture of the little face in the window.  It looks just like last year when Oliver was watching from inside.

Before long, Katy Grace and I joined in the fun.  It was her first time to experience snow.  She thought it was pretty amazing.

{ Then there were naps and snuggles with Auntie B }

{ Snuggles with Daddy }

My family left in the early evening and we all went to our own churches for Christmas Eve Services and then spent Christmas morning at our own houses before joining up again Christmas day.

{ Christmas Eve, our neighbor's house all lit up }

{ Our house "

{ Christmas morning }

{ The day dawned beautifully with very cold but brilliant sunshine }

We drove down to my parent's house in the early afternoon.  We decided to take the long, scenic route.  Tim and I had driven it the very first Christmas we spent together.  That was five Christmases ago.  It hardly seems possible we have been together that long.  What a lot has happened since then!  That drive, five years ago, was when we had our "we are in a serious/exclusive relationship talk", when we knew that if everything kept going ahead, we were headed toward marriage.  That day was also brilliantly sunny.  Such a happy drive down memory lane and pretty special as we remembered it and kept looking in the backseat at our two little blessings with one on the way!  Wow!

{ Opening gifts at Grammie and Bapa's with Auntie B }

{ We finished the night off with a trip to the train park to see the lights }

{ Tim asked me to dance on the little platform there.  Again such sweet memories of our first time there together five years before when we danced and were falling in love. }

 A good end to a wonderful Christmas season!

Now on to 2013!