Needless to say the winter here in Arkansas was not too terribly bad! We had minimal cold weather, and only one promising day of snow. My clinical for school was even cancelled, thinking a blizzard was coming in :) as all of us here in Arkansas typically do, but no such luck! We did have about an hour of hard core flurries, that were beautiful and gave the impression if it were to last like that for a few hours, we might have actually been able to make a snow man. Haha. I kept Elem home, noting the early morning snow flurries, and we planned to stay inside and do cozy activities before running out to play in the snow. But since the snow wasnt around long enough to even cover the ground, our snow play was limited to say the least.
Elem did have enough time to run out and make a snow cone out of the snow that lined the patio table, and it was even enough to give him a brain freeze :) He ran inside with this face, telling me about the brain freeze, before I could even get outside to catch him "playing" in the little bit of snow we had.
After the brain freeze, the whole idea of enjoying and playing in the snow was pretty much ruined. haha. And we just staid inside and watched movies and enjoyed the day off from school! Any excuse to stay home with Elem is a good one!!
So looking back over the holidays, I forgot to include my little man and his big moment in Little Rock Family Magazine:). We actually didnt even know he was going to be in it, and got a call from some sweet friends saying they saw Elem in the holiday section. So of course we ran out and scooped up several copies to make sure we could show off my little man!
He looks so young looking at the pick-it is from when he was 3 years old! We went to a Breakfast With Santa, and a lady kept taking his photo while he was playing with all the ornaments on the christmas trees. Who knew we would see it here a year later. :) Sweet little man, looking cute in his christmas attire. hehe.
to the Shelby Family. As if we are not busy, stressed, over worked, and under paid, we thought we would throw in a curve ball to finish out my last semester of nursing school :)
Shock and Awe are understatements, but excited, joyful, and purely thankful are slowly overtaking shock and awe. :) We will welcome a new little addition sometime in early August, around the 16th or a little earlier-thank goodness for C-sections!
This Christmas was by far the best Christmas we have ever had! 4 years old is for sure the key year to enjoy magic of Santa and everything he brings to make Christmas more fun. Even though it took me finishing my finals before I actually got into the Christmas Spirit, once I got there, it was so amazing. I loved every single second of talking about Christmas with Elem, the face that it is Jesus' birthday and he loves us so much that he lets everyone get presents on his birthday, and of course good ole Santa Clause and his reindeer.
Of course we did some tree decorating and went all out with as many lights as possible on the house. And when I say we, I mean Seth climbed on the house and did all that fancy work outside :) Its way to cold for me to be out there. haha. Everyone in our house LOVES decorating the tree and I think this is always the one thing that gets us really ready for Christmas. Every year I plan to get a real tree and go to the Christmas Tree farm and cut our own down, but ever since I have been in nursing school there is just never enough time to do it. SO, we settled for a live tree from our local Lowes. Elem could have cared less though, and he loved decorating his own christmas tree for his room the best.
Our tradition is to buy a new ornament (or 2!)every year that Elem picks out so he can add it to his tree. This year he chose a gigantic gold fleur de lis (noting that it was "The Saints", and he only wanted that one). haha So we got it.
Elem ended up with not only all of his ornaments, but most of the ones I like to decorate our tree with too. Oh well, his tree was fantastic!
A couple of days before Christmas Memaw came to celebrate with us and she got Elem super into opening presents. He was hooked from the first present! We had a blast, and Elem scored a blue Wii, which he is slightly obsessed with now. Thank you Memaw!! And made a yummy gingerbread choo choo train. Yes, most people don't eat these things once they are put together but Elem continued to eat off of it until I threw it away!
On Christmas Eve we went to Ali and Dustin's house to celebrate with just us and the Shelby's, and the kids of course had a blast! Opening all kinds of presents, and running wild. We made Christmas cookies for Santa and left reindeer food outside for Rudolph and his gang to be sure they would stop by our house! ;)
Seth and I awoke on Christmas morning to our lights being flipped on with screams of-
"Mom, Dad, get up!!! Santa did come!!!!! Look what he brought me! " (as he was holding his big blue hula hoop in his arms with the biggest grin I have ever seen. It was amazingly awesome. Seeing his face and hearing his excitement had us jumping up and running into the living room to see what Santa had brought him. Loved it! One of my favorite moments ever.
For a not so morning person, this little guy perked up and started tearing into his presents, loving every single thing he got from Santa! He was so sweet and didn't complain about one thing! Which was very important to me. I really wanted him to be thankful this Christmas and not spend too much of his energy whining and worrying over presents. I mean they are the most fun part of Christmas, but I just wanted it to be positive and not a spoiling negative kind of holiday season!!!
Yes, Santa broke down and brought a play rifle to the house. Tsk tsk. What are you gonna do? I mean look at that grin:)
Who knew Santa knew all about Super Heros!!!
After opening lots of presents and playing with lots of new toys, when under the tree was pretty much bare, Elem found one last special letter from Santa.....
hehehehehehe. He was so pumped and had no idea what Santa might have brought him! He wanted 3 things from santa-A blue hula hoop (check!), a remote control hot wheels (check!), and a _____________!
I apologize for the terrible video footage but again, I have no camera! So Iphone images and video are all we got this year! haha. Hey, the video is worth a thousand words!
I just cant say it enough. What a great Christmas! It was pretty low key, just the way we wanted with all the stress from school, and all of our busy schedules. We got to spend time with family, lots of time with just our own little family, and had just enough time to squeeze in some fun holiday traditions. Merry Christmas!
Oops I almost forgot, Elem did help me wrap up some special presents for our adopt a child from the shelter. We (along with my clinical group from school) adopted this little 7 week old girl, and got her lots of cute clothes and things. And even though Elem didnt think her presents were all that cool, he did help me wrap some of them and take them to the shelter to drop them off. He was so proud to walk in there and say that he helped her have a good Christmas. It was amazing. Our plan is to to that every year and hopefully next year he can choose most of the items and we can continue our little tradition!
