Sunday, January 16, 2011

vanlentine's crafts

We have broken out the Valentine's Day decorations at our house. You may remember this heart felt garland from last year. I found this cute wreath below and am wondering if I am up to the challenge.

You can make your own felt heart wreath shown above by following this tutorial.
Do you have any craft ideas for Valentine's Day?

Saturday, January 15, 2011

snow! snow! snow!

Snow fell upon our city this past Sunday night and we woke up to a beautiful white blanket on the ground. Asher is now associating snow with Christmas morning and asked if Santa had come. Thankfully, we had traveled north for Christmas so we had our snowsuits ready to adorn.


Asher thought it would be fun to make different types of tracks in the snow, including bike tracks.

Jonas, my cleaner-upper, had to clear the snow off of everything in his reach- the steps, his sandbox, the car, the garbage cans.

Asher is always ready to have a snow ball fight!!

And of course, when you can't go anywhere, you do the next best thing...you invite your neighbors (Rebecca, Gavin and Zack) over to play.

My friend Rebecca's snow day tradition growing up was to make beignets (french doughnuts). We were more than obliged to help her continue this delicious tradtion along with our other neighbors Shawn and Sydney (wish I could have gotten a picture of sweet Sydney in her winter gear!).

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

remembering haiti


image from here

It's hard to believe it's been one year since the devastating earthquake in Haiti. Hoping to continue to find ways to help this country get back on it's feet!

wilson family christmas

We kicked off Christmas with David's family on the night of Christmas by opening our stockings. We hoped that this would make the actual opening of gifts the following day not so crazy (and it worked!!). We enjoyed the time with all of our nieces and nephews. This is our niece, Skylar.

I finally handed my camera over to David so that I could be in at least one Christmas picture this year.

Opening of the stockings...

The next morning we opened all of our other gifts. There is never a dull moment at the Wilson's, especially when my father-in-law is included in the gift wrapping. This is how he wrapped my mother-in-law's gift! Hilarious!!

So we tried for a picture of all the grandchildren (at least this year my children were healthy for the picture...well, minus Jonas' seeping eyes). Of course there was no wrestling my oldest child into a Christmas sweater when his Nana had told him the night before that he could indeed where his Titans football uniform for the Christmas picture. So here it is folks, the best one out of what seemed like 50 shots of trying to get all seven children to stay in front of the tree at the same time (we gave up on all looking at the camera and smiling on about #5).

However after all the madness above, we did manage to get them to all be very still and quiet for longest time (unfortunately, Skylar didn't fall for our tricks, or drugs as it appears from their flat, solemn expressions).

And how did we get these six, very active children to stay so still and quiet, you might ask? We told them The Christmas story with Nana and Pop's Nativity set. Maybe Nana should do the Christmas Eve service next year. :)

Jonas finally saw through all of this and said, "please, can we stop with the picture taking and just open our presents already?!"

And so, we did, with a little help from Elf Jonas!

Monday, January 10, 2011

Christmas catch-up

We had a wonderful month of December, counting down the days until Christmas morning. The boys' excitement grew as we made cookies and gave them to some of our community workers, bought presents for our Angel Tree, watched several classic Christmas movies, read great Christmas books, visited the Christmas train display in Cincinnati, spent time with my family in Cincinnati pre-Christmas and time with David's family post-Christmas (and that is our short list)! I wish that I had pictures for all of Christmas activity but Santa waited until Christmas morning to bring my new (well, refurbished) camera. However, I was able to capture some of these memories even post-Christmas!

The boys made these candy Christmas trees at Breakfast with Santa.

Our gingerbread house!

Santa brought the boys a parking garage.

David and his dad displaying their fun t-shirts. The boys got David a Green Lantern t-shirt for Christmas (this was one of his favorite comic characters growing up.)

Santa also brought Asher a football uniform that now has become his everyday uniform. He loves it to say the least!