The Five of Us

Ok seriously I end up every year texting someone up at my parents house for this recipe we have used as long as I can remember.  I literally only make this once a year at Christmas time, and it's a good thing or I'd have to hit the gym a lot harder!  It's the only fudge I'll eat and I love it....so I am putting it on here so next time all I have to do when I need the recipe...is come look it up. :)

So I have been really trying to be better at this since having Hannah.  I want to simplify things.  There are many things I've done that successfully with, but Christmas has been one of those things I want to take back to simple.  It's hard!  It's hard to fight against everything that tells you Christmas has to be a certain way...that gifts reign supreme and getting wins out.  This year I feel like we're getting closer to getting farther away from that idea.

 I want to make the birthdays a larger celebration of the girls and their life and how blessed we are to have them both in our lives.  I would like that to be our largest gift giving time of the year, a time to focus on the individual who's bithday it is.  Which brings me to Christmas.  Christ's birth.  Christmas, I want to be about family and good friends.  I want it to be about moments and being together and doing things as a family.  I want it to be about slowing down and taking a good look at the year behind us, and the year ahead.  I want to be able to focus on baking together and reading stories and not rushing from store to store trying to find the perfect gift for the girl's or each other or for whoever.
 Adam and I haven't done gifts for each other for Christmas for quite awhile.  The focus has been on others and now the girls.  But I would really love to find one way each Christmas to devote some time or resources to someone else in need.  Another person, another family...I want to teach the girls about humbleness and servanthood, I don't want them growing up feeling entitled to everything they see.  I want them to be thankful and grateful for what they are currently blessed with and feel anything outside of that is a great bonus, an incredible blessing.  I want them to grow up knowing how to place others first and to think of others who are less fortunate.
 So this year there's been a few gifts I made for the two of them together and then mostly a few things that will fit in their stockings.  It helps they have wonderful family members that help out with things they really need or may want.  We have always been so blessed by how both of our families give to these girls.  It just seems like sometimes there's so much energy wasted on rushing place to place in an already busy season to find gifts or to feel like our Christmas tree is sufficiently stocked and stuffed.  I don't want to be the mad, crazy woman who's shopping last minute store to store, I want to be the mom home reading stories and watching movies with my kids, or taking a fun trip somewhere all together in the season and enjoying what's around me.  After all these people around me, this family, are gifts I've been given, something I've been blessed with beyond measure.  And while it's understandable that as parents we want to shower our kids and our families with everything they could ever wish and hope for, I believe it's also so important to foster simplicity in life.  I believe it's just as important to give the gifts of learned humbleness and a love of giving, a want of doing things for others.  I want to foster a servants heart and a spirit of giving.

So we will have to see in years to come how well I do at this.  :)  It seems like it's getting easier and easier to phase out the least important things and focus more on what really makes this family tick and come together.

I don't do Christmas letters well.  I figure most things the average Joe doesn't really care about...and if they do they most likely know already.  I started the blog after we had Hannah so that any family members not in close proximity to us could read and keep up on what's going on in our little family's life.  And since being able to put the blog into a journal format I've also blogged things I want to remember so that it makes it into the book.  So I guess I figure anyone not directly in our lives who wants to find out what's going on...can just come here.  I also, have received some really BAD Christmas letters...I mean bad.  Don't get me wrong I've gotten some great ones from friends and family and I love hearing about what's gone on in your lives...but I've received some pretty random Christmas letters from people I barely know and the details....it's excruciating!  So I am just not a Christmas letter kind of person because I know that I'd be one to send off a letter and the recipients would all be huddled around it laughing at the details I've chosen to put in or rolling their eyes at the lack of substance to my letter. 
I prefer pictures.  I think one picture can sum it all up.  I think that pictures can tell a story.  In one photo you can gage how old a child is...most likely their personality if you are picking the right photos.  A picture is worth a thousand words.  So I make it a habit every year to have our family photos taken at some point so we have a photo record of where and who we were at that point in all our lives.  We started this after Hannah was born and have continued it.  I love it.  Like I said I really love pictures.  So this year we had our friend Alex take pictures.  He did a wonderful job.  However, this is the picture I used for our Christmas card:

It's nice...it's lovely.  But it's too...calm.  :)  It's a wonderful picture and one of the few that actually got taken of us as a whole family because Hannah spent the first 15 minutes avoiding our friend Alex and refusing to be in the picture at all because she wanted to be out playing in the field.  So really, I feel like this picture here is a more accurate portrayal of our family and life right now:
Abby happy smiling, Hannah begrudgingly making an appearance in a photo, Adam is fine, and I just taking it all in stride.  Even this photo below would have worked:
Abby in all her seriousness when she realizes someone she doesn't know is around and Hannah...still being Hannah.  However, I REALLY love this picture:
I LOVE it...I plan to blow it up and have it put on a canvas.  It's beautiful and I feel calm and happy when I look at it.  It makes me smile.  This is my favorite of all four of us.  It's different and it's special to me.
In January we had Abby Joy.  This girl is wonderful.  She sleeps through the night most of the time, she is happy, she is content, she gives laughter, has a wonderful light-up-the-room smile, she is self entertaining, she is loving and warm, she is already quietly sarcastic just by action.  She has brought so much to all 3 of our lives and I could not imagine her not here.  I cannot believe that next month she will be turning 1 year.  It has flown way too quickly and we are just now starting to really see her little personality.  She LOVES food.

In October Hannah Grace turned 3.  She is full of life, loves a party, extremely personable and engaging, she lives life full force, head on, loves people, does not like to be alone and has an enormous heart.  She is giggly and goofy, and will do anything for a laugh.  She is always ready to help out, wants to make sure you are happy and is ambitious, she LOVES to learn, loves to read, she's intelligent, she is loving, she is a little mama, she is hard on herself, she is thoughtful and always aware of people's feelings.  She wants 20 siblings.