(I was unable to find the source of this cute photo. If it is yours, please email me and I will give the proper credit with apologies.)
Hello friends! I kept telling myself that I would blog at
Christmas (ha!), then I would do an “end of year” post around New Year’s
(double ha!), and here it is February. So I’m just going to call a spade a
spade and do a “catch up” post, with a comment (not a promise!) that I miss
blogging and hope to come back more regularly. I truly do miss this little
world but carving out the time to post is another story. So here I am…
I won’t do a full detailed holiday post, but I do want to
say that we had a wonderful end to 2013. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday,
and this year was wonderful as we spent time with family and friends. Christmas
was also a good holiday for us. We took the girls down to Opryland to see the
Rockettes and stayed at the Opryland Hotel for one night. The girls were
thrilled and had a wonderful time. It was definitely a pink Christmas at our
house; both girls got Barbie houses from Santa. Big A got the Barbie Dream
House and Little A got the Malibu Barbie House, along with toys, clothes, and
anything else you can imagine! We are so blessed with big, wonderful families
and I am always so grateful for the wonderful times that we have with them each
Christmas. We basically do Christmas from the 24th through the 26th,
and it is always such a good time.
2014 started off with us organizing and reorganizing the
house. Both girls’ rooms got a thorough clean-out, and we bought shelves and
tubs for them to keep everything organized. Part of the dis-organization was
our fault-we got the girls so quickly and unexpectedly that we didn’t have the
rooms ready for them, and we were picking up things randomly and not being very
organized about things as we got them. Now the old/unused toys are gone, and all of
their new stuff has a place to go. I’ve been so proud of the girls since we got
our new system in place; they are doing a fantastic job of keeping their rooms
neat and organized. Mr. P and I cleaned out and reorganized our closet also,
and I’m embarrassed at the amount of bags that we filled up to donate to
Goodwill. We’ve also done some work on the garage and basement, and some
rearranging in the great room and kitchen. I love, love, love my clean and
organized house! So far, we’ve done well with keeping everything organized now
that we are back in school/work mode.
Like most of the rest of the country, we’ve had a
challenging winter weather-wise. We’ve missed 6 days of school so far, but
until this week we didn’t have much snow on any of the days. But Sunday night
we got a good dose of snow, so we made the most of our snow day yesterday by
sledding, making snowmen and snow angels, and eating snow cream. We’re out
again today, so the girls are outside playing in the snow right now as I type.
After Christmas, I dusted off my old bread baker, and we
have been experimenting with making different types of bread. I’ve really
enjoyed playing around with it, so if you have any good bread recipes be sure
to send them my way!
I can’t post much about our situation with the girls, but I
do want to say that we are at a point where we are a little frustrated with our
case and I have been praying hard about our situation lately. A friend sent me
this the other day, and it is one of the many verses that I have been drawn to
lately for comfort.
As I have said before, we are so blessed to have incredible
support from our family and friends.
I hope that everyone is off to a wonderful start in 2014. It's time for the girls to come in and warm up, which means that it's time for me to make hot chocolate and popcorn! Hope to "see" you again soon!
Blessings,
MB
