Check it out! Look at my "big girl room"! We moved into this house pregnant with Matney and then came Halle Kate...and then came lots of diapers and baby food and baby toys and baby clothes and...we'd never done anything with our bedroom and it was driving me crazy! For Christmas Jared helped me paint our room and we got new bedding. I might have even bugged my mom enough that she let me open a package early so that I could get everything ironed and ready to go before Christmas. Here it is!
Clearly we aren't sure how to arrange those pillows yet.
An ipod - how cool is that? I don't have a clue how to turn it on, much less get music on it or work the camera. Technology and I aren't always friends. Can an old dog learn new tricks? We'll see! And we got a great new double jogging stroller that has speakers, you just plug the ipod into it and voila! music. Well, I hope its that easy! I promise you'll see us out jogging the first day it is warm enough.
My brother's preferred type of tape for wrapping.
We've been celebrating Christmas for about 48 hours and it has been wonderful! Christmas Eve and we broke from tradition and some of the adults opened presents when the girls went to bed. Normally Christmas Eve we just open one gift, our matching Christmas PJs (oh, how the boys love that, ha! And oh how I can't wait to match my daughters. I may even wear a big bow too!). But, to make Christmas day be a little easier, cleaner and more focused on the girls we decided just to go ahead and exchange some of our gifts early. Then we had more gift time on Friday and Christmas again with J's family today. Shew! We have certainly killed some trees with all this wrapping paper!
It has been a fun time with laughs and a few sweet tears because of each others thoughtfulness. As I've been putting pictures up on the blog I've been thinking about the last two days. Once again this year Jared and I were spoiled silly, our girls were too but that is another post. Watching the girls be excited and open presents was so much fun. Was there really anything Jared or I really needed? No. Are gifts what Christmas is really about? No. Have our families gone above and beyond and treated Jared and I to some wonderful new things? Yes ...and it was so nice. Not the actuall stuff (though I am in love with some of new things) but the time to kind of like a kid again.
It has been a wonderful, incredible year with Matney growing up and Halle Kate joining the family and everyone being healthy. But, it has also been a challenging year. Jared has had a tough year at the office. They've had layoffs and paycuts all while we were growing our family. I know that he's certainly felt pressure to provide for us and good grief, he worked an enormous of really long hours. And while I am so so so thankful for how hard he works so that I am able to stay home with the girls there have been some really long days! It has certainly been an adjustment to go from no kids to two babies in such a short amount of time. Christmas this year has kind of been a break from the responsibility of being adults and parents. I was super excited waiting for Christmas because I knew Matney would have a blast. And, just being honest, it was super fun to be spoiled a little and have some fun things that we'd never buy for ourselves.
So, thank you to everyone who has made this Christmas so much fun for us and for our girls. They have had a great time (more pictures coming soon, especially cool stuff from my new digital scrapbook software!). I know I speak for Jared when I say THANK YOU, THANK YOU to all of you who have been loving on us too. We know that Christmas really isn't about "stuff" but thanks for spoiling us old folks this season! I'm just counting the minutes until I can go snuggle under the new covers in my pretty room while Jared reads his new book about tiling our bathroom with his new tools. Ah, doesn't that sound wonderful?!?!
