Outside Decor....Day & Night

We are all about the white lights, can you tell?

Billy loves putting large bulbs perfectly straight across the roof.

I like the way it looks too.

This Saturday night is our town lighting festival and parade of lights.

And Friday I have a women's Christmas dinner...

So the posts will just keep coming!

December is always my biggest posting month on the blog.

I love it and I know my BFF's who live too far away, and Billy's family do too!

The Boys' Tree!

Here is the boy bedroom tree.

I have a lot more photos of them with it, but blurring J's face first gets tedious.
Some of Isaac's personal ornaments.

Last year he got into toy story.

He is getting a Rex ornament this year to commemorate Toy Story 3, and J is getting Mr. Potato Head.

Their tree topper is a black Santa.
Isaac calls him a king from the Bible. I like that better!

Their bookshelf village complete with African American figures.

Found these items at Dollar Tree last year. Isaac loves setting these pieces up.

Oh Christmas Tree...

I said earlier that our family tree is my favorite decoration.

Last year we bought a glorious pre-lit tree with soft branches and it lights up the whole room.

On this tree are several categories of ornaments besides my polka dot balls.

Lots of photos. I love photos...couldn't you tell?! :)

Some really take us back every year when we pull them out of the box.

We have ornaments to represent trips we have taken.

And seven years worth of hard labor that Billy put into Starbucks!

I don't collect really anything...except kid's toys and books!

I don't have room for collections, I don't like to dust, and I am not huge on the sentimental value of stuff... plus Billy and I are all about the purging. If you have ever caught an episode of Hoarders, you will know how we feel! :)

So that means other than some photo books, our ornaments are my ownly displayed collectable.

I hope our kids will enjoy these as much as we do, and the memories they have for our family for years to come.

Vivi's Pink Tree

We have a tradition of putting trees in our Kids bedrooms.

Vivi's of course is pink...and she insisted on taking several ornaments from our family tree that she deemed "hers". So her tree has become a bit of a hot mess...much like her personality! Even though we let them trim their own trees, Mommy sneaks in after they are asleep to disperse the mess a little!
She wanted to pose with the tree, which is a good idea because I can keep track of how tall she is getting each year.

She cracked me up doing this sassy pose!

And then she just got goofy.

On their personal trees we put a Baby's First Christmas (they each happen to have two of these, one on the family tree and one on their personal)

Then every year on Christmas eve, I put under their trees a wrapped ornament that represents what they were into that year along with a wrapped Christmas children's book. They open each before bed time, hang their ornament and we read their books next to the light of their tree. I love this tradition!

Also on their trees go every craft ornament they make.

This means that our family tree is less....shall I say...tacky. :)

This year, Vivi's tree was also gifted with two sets of pink ornaments.

She calls it her Barbie tree.

Oh! And each child has an ornament that looks like a Christmas cookie with their initial on it, you can see in the second photo above.

This post was so long, I will have to show you the boys tree tomorrow!

The Stockings Were Hung...

I thought as I change my blog template for Christmas,

you might want to see our decor photos too!

Our color scheme is red with silver and green accent.

I love blogs that post lots of pictures, as you can probably tell from mine! ;)

The kitchen

I was asked how tall our tree is and with the star it is over 8 feet, perfect for these tall ceilings.

I think I have had this string of mittens for more than 10 years.

There are still a few more photos to take in the kitchen and of the kids' bedroom trees, and we weeded a lot out as I wanted to go more simple and less cluttered this year.

I have purchased some great pieces on after Christmas sales and hope to shop those again this year to update some of our stuff (like throw pillows to match the couch, a red and white shower curtain in the main bathroom, hand towels, etc.) Also, last year I heard a great idea of putting a white tree in your kitchen and decorating it with only food themed ornaments! I think that sounds so cute...so maybe I can find some of that on clearance and launch my kitchen tree next year!

Tomorrow after church we will be doing the front yard.

Hope ya'll are having fun decorating your homes for the holidays.

Thanksgiving 2010

We had a wonderfully joy filled Thanksgiving this year.

The day could not have gone better. As you know (because I couldn't quit talking about it!), Isaac and J's cousins spent the day and night with us. I have SO much to say about that. This post will be crazy long...it really should be two posts, but I am just going to dive right in! The boys arrived around noon and Billy called me 5 minutes before to say "they are all hungry!" So I set out the appetizer platters to greet them. Between the 5 kids and Billy, almost everything was eaten! This was a precurser to what would be our 24 hour food fest. Boys sure do eat ALOT! :)

But before we get to all our fun, I will show off the table decor for those of you like me out there who just love this stuff:

For each child, I made felt Mayflowers as name cards/treat holders.

The idea completely swiped from the PB kids catalog.

The boys were hilarious when one said about the cloth napkins,

"Uh...we aren't supposed to use these."

We gave them the OK.

LOL.

ok, now that we are past that....there were so many sweet moments with K and T.

J loved wearing K's shoes.

We played pin the hat on the turkey and even the 13 year old wanted to be in on it!

I bought Lego sets for Isaac and T to work on.

And they played just about every board game we owned! Battleship, Guess Who, Sorry, Monopoly Jr., Buzz Lightyear Operation...

and Jenga (our family favorite!)

Even though the temp was in the 40's, they all enjoyed kick ball in the backyard followed by warm apple cider, which the boys had never heard of before.

Loved my baby's shirts this year.
J's was especially meaningful as he now has a Mommy and Daddy to care for him!

and of course my sweet pumpkin pie!

The food turned out so well. There is a lot to be said about brining your turkey the night before! Desserts were spiced cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and pumpkin pie.

We ended the day with the older boys staying up to watch Home Alone.

And yes...more food! That is a popcorn bar w/two flavors of popcorn and candy toppings.

And I rose bright and early to roll out my dough that spent the night rising, for Pioneer Woman's Cinnamon Rolls.

It made 5 and a half pans.

K wolfed down 4 rolls and I sent a tray of baked and frosted rolls to each of their foster moms.

Pretty good, but too much butter for my liking.

The kids LOVED them, so that was great.

My personal thoughts on the day:

We were so happy to have K and T with us and our 3 kids. It felt like such a warm full house. We ran a fire and the boys quickly relaxed. They wanted to watch the Cowboys game, so our tv was christened for the first time in 7 years with football! All afternoon and into the evening they wanted to play game after game with us, even getting out playdough! Billy noted that during A Charlie Brown Christmas this morning, that they laughed at predictable parts...as though they had never seen it before. It seemed like they were making up for a lost childhood with all they wanted to do and were amused by at the ages of 10 and 13. They were so polite calling us Mr. Billy and Ms. Laurie and saying "yes Ma'am" and "No Sir" every single time. They asked if they could help us clean up and would jump up to help J if he needed something. What touched me the most was that they asked to take everything home...extra candies, extra pie slices, the basketball and football. This really choked me up at times. We take our stuff so for granted and these two treasured the littlest things. K showed up to spend the night with just a couple things in a grocery sack and in shorts on the coldest day of the year. When I took J's coat out of the closet to cut the tags off it, T exclaimed in shock "Is that new?!" Wow. So humbling. Also, K asked Billy if they could come every weekend! It is a 2 hour round trip to retrieve them, and get them here...so the most we could do is once a month. T's foster mom called me to thank me for the cookies and to tell me that Billy had just picked him up and was on her way, and she said in her thick New Orleans drawl, "I know right now we are going to like you people. You can tell when people are just puttin' on a show, and you all are the real deal." So sweet. I told her how much we want to be a lifelong support for these boys because we understand that she can't open her doors up to every single foster child she has ever cared for on holidays and birthdays, and she said "you know that is right!" As I drove them home today, K told me a lot about his upbringing, and how he had fantasies of jumping out of the caseworkers car when they would pass his old neighborhood on his visitation days, and just run and hide. But he said he never did because he was afraid they would move him out of his foster home and he was happy there. Such a strange paradox, you know you are safe and in a good place but you so much miss what you always knew. That feeling of HOME cannot be forced or changed on a dime. Home is in your heart no matter where you go and my prayer for them is that they would feel home where they are at now. I know J is home here and this is his happiest place. I want so much for K and T to have that feeling too. K also said something profound. He told me that he had asked his foster dad why CPS takes kids out of their homes and then dumps them to grow up in the system and then they end up in jail or on the streets with NO family. I told him I agreed that was bad and told him we want to always be his family so he will never have to be afraid of having nowhere to turn. He nodded and said "I like that alot." I talked to him about graduating highschool and thinking about college, making something of himself. We talked about peer pressure and drug usage and I asked what he used to do when his friends in his old neighborhood used drugs and he said he would just take off because he didn't want to be around what he had seen destroy his family. He told me stories about my boys' birthmother and his mom. I asked him if he was happier where his life is now, or when he lived with his Grandma and he said now because back then there would be times when there was no food in the house for a couple days.

I just wanted to hold them tight and feed them and clothe them forever. Our resources are limited with 3 kids of our own to raise on one income, so there really is not much we can do for them. We are going to do Christmas in 3 weeks and after that just take it month by month. I will be praying hard that the Lord provides a way for us to continue to bless these boys.

They are so dear to our hearts already.

My heart has been so filled with a deep sense of gratitude to my Lord for so many, many reasons. This Thanksgiving goes down as one of my all time favorites, for sure.