a glimpse of december

Homemade chocolate cupcakes, compliments to Nathan!  The boys all worked together to make a very delicious bedtime snack!  What a great husband!  They were delicious!  Levi mostly just ate the frosting off of the top of his though.  :)

I took a short online class called Holiday Joy about creatively capturing the Spirit of Christmas in photography.  It was fun to read other people's family traditions and think about the things that we want to do with our children.



This is an ornament that I received as a child!  Still on our Christmas tree.  :)



Looking out of our front window.



This is the ornament that I got for our first Christmas together.



Our side door is decorated with a floral that my mom made.





A delicate eggshell nativity made by Nathan's grandmother who had passed away before we met.



Enjoying the afternoon with my usual glass of Dr. M and making Christmas lists from the Target ads.  :)

I love to have the tree lit, even during the day when we are home!



Levi and Dorian have been taking turns each night at suppertime opening another verse on our advent calendar.



Homemade play-doh! 

It was supposed to be red, but it turned out pink.  Oh well, I was just really glad that it worked!  It was the first time I've done that.  :)  Dorian is actually sitting across from me at the kitchen table right now, playing with it again.  Levi is napping.  I love quiet afternoons.

I was searching for all of the library books that we had checked out so we could return them and get new ones, but one was missing.  As I was searching the house, I was inspired to clean out Dorian's closet.  He is funny about his toys.  He keeps getting more and more "special toys" and stashes them in his closet.  The heap of toys needed to be sorted.  Thankfully Dorian warmed up to the idea.  After this process, we decided to put the Little People toys in the storage ottoman in the living room.  And now the boys have been having fun building Little People towns.  I love it!

I've been in a shopping mode for the last week or so!  I didn't really have too many gifts to get, but I broke down and decided to buy some new clothes for myself!  I was really trying hard to save money and I knew that I didn't need anything...but then changed my mind and decided that I really did.  :) 

We've spent a lot of time playing in the snow already this year! 

Our box of Christmas gifts from Mom and Dad Tintle arrived yesterday in an unusual way.  A man who I didn't know drove up in a truck, and after some debate, I opened the door to see what he wanted.  And as it turns out, he lives about a block away and had received our box of presents!  Thankfully, he brought them to us!  

We enjoyed taking the wrapped gifts out and putting them under the Christmas tree.  But the boys had the most fun playing inside of the box with all of the packing peanuts!  And when Nathan got home from work, we decided to let the boys open one of their gifts.  :)  They each got a CD with songs that had their names in them so we've enjoyed listening to them. 



Christmas parties and programs are underway.  We went to the Sciences Christmas party this past Friday evening for a little while.  Tuesday night was the Math Dept Christmas party which consisted of a delicious meal of soup and bread, dessert and white elephant gifts.  Last night my friends and I all got together for a cookie exchange.  The highlight of the evening was passing around a picture of ourselves and our husbands in middle school...the years of "big hair" gave us all a good laugh.  Sunday was our Christmas program at church.  Dorian was supposed to be a stable animal, but as it turns out, he wouldn't do it.  :(  I'm really hoping it won't be an issue next year.

We plan on having our family Christmas party on Saturday.  I'm looking forward to making Gingerbread cutout cookies with the boys.  It was mostly Dorian's idea to take them to our neighbors after we make them!  How thoughtful! (We did do something similar last year as well.)  Nathan is excited about making our meal...not sure what he is planning.  And we are going to open the gifts that are under the tree!

This coming Tuesday Dorian will have a Christmas party at preschool.  We plan on making cookies for his teachers and he also has to bring in a $2 gift for a gift exchange.  Hopefully he'll enjoy that!

And just one week from today, we will take the drive out to Iowa to spend about a week with my family.

Lots of excitement!