A New Year's Wish

May peace fill all the empty spaces around you.
And in you, may contentment answer all your wishes.

May comfort be yours, warm and soft like a sigh.
And may the coming year show you that every day
is really a first day, a new year.

Let abundance be your constant companion,
so that you have much to share.

May mirth be near you always,
like a lamp shining brightly
on the many paths you travel.

May you be true love.

Author Unknown
But Very Much Appreciated!

This quote is from Inspiration Peak www.inspirationpeak.com (You can sign up to get a daily quote from this site-Thanks Jenny for sharing this with us a few months ago!) We want to wish everyone a very Happy New Year!!

Christmas Morning

Honduran Style Celebration

Maya and Daddy dancing, after about two minutes of instruction Maya was dancing like a pro!

Logan got into it too.

Maya, Tia Mercedes, and Katy having a great time.

Magic Reindeer Food

Christmas Jammies-Logan, Chachi, Katy, Maya

Christmas Gifts

Here are the Christmas gifts I made for the Grandparents. I've been dying to put them on the blog, but since they were supposed to be a surprise I had to wait. I got the idea from YES! It's a Scrapbook (I think I mentioned it before) and with some modifications (of course!) I think they turned out pretty. Merry Christmas!

Christmas Program

Logan sat on the stage with the rest of the two year olds, but didn't sing AT ALL. Even though he sings/screams all of the songs in the car and absolutely LOVES We Wish You A Merry Christmas.

Maya was Mary for the reading of the Christmas Story.

She did a fantastic job.

The kids got this playmobil Nativity set yesterday-they added a few of their favorite animals. I had been looking for a child-friendly, hands-on Nativity set for a while and when I saw this one I was SO happy! We read the story and they acted out the scene with great style!

Santa in our community

On Saturday, (I know, I'm really behind!) Santa came to our community to visit with the kids. It was SO nice to skip the mall and have Santa come to us! Maya asked for "a baby pig and a puppy (not a real one a stuffed Dalmatian)" and Logan wants "a monkey". Boy, Santa you have it easy this year! I'm sure they will get everything they want, despite me telling Logan every other minute he's going to get rocks in his stocking if he doesn't stop ________ (fill in the blank with what ever you can imagine and I've said it!). I know it is supposed to be coal, but seriously, they don't know what that is and when I tried to explain it the message came across as rocks and so that's what we're going with. It seems to be working because I haven't even said it today (10:03 AM). But really, how nice to have a little Santa visit in the neighborhood-and they even had snacks and drinks along with activities and little gifts! Logan ran right in and starting chatting Santa up, Maya was more reluctant-trying to hide behind me for about 10 seconds until I told her if she didn't tell Santa what she wanted she wouldn't get anything. Then she warmed up nicely-imagine that! And just in case you are wondering, this is the real Santa and all those others are his helpers, because how could Santa be in all those places at once?

Snow Day

Starting on the top right and going around: 1. The snow on Jasmin's fir-she was SO excited jumping all around in the snow. 2. A shot from the front porch of the grass with a white covering! 3. Another shot from the front porch. 4. Logan in the beginning-happy! 5. Maya tasting the snow. 6. The playhouse in the back yard you can kinda see the snow falling. 7. The tree in the front yard -it looked beautiful glistening with silvery snow. 8. Maya happy in the snow-very surprised that it was snowing in Texas. 9. Logan after about 10 minutes-he was cold and his hands were freezing because he kept touching the snow without gloves. He just wanted to go in and have hot chocolate (which we did). 10. (center) Our front yard with the lights and a white grass!

Shining Star

Every year the preschool auctions yard signs at the Christmas Program. Each class designs and creates an original sign, this year it is shaped like a star to go with the Star Lead Us To Jesus/Shine theme. So, I designed this star that has 100 white Christmas lights attached around the edges and it says shine in "grilled cheese" font with glitter and then has even more glitter swirled all around. I might bid on it myself!

Snow in HOUSTON!!!

Yes it is true, although not like we got used to in Ohio, but there is indeed snow falling today in the Houston area! I didn't think I would ever see that. I suppose if the temperature continues to drop it might actually stick-wouldn't that be something?

Cool Video

STY-LISH

Maya's Hannah Montana hair. I let her get this last week and she wears it around the house all the time. She has been a super helper lately and so while we were at the mall I gave her $5.00 to spend in Libby-Lu. Well, they are closing so everything was half-price. She chose this hair. She's been wanting it forever. The rule is only in the house, which of course has already been broken because she wore it out to dinner once-and I let her and so did Daddy because she asked us.

Too cute!

Logan has some serious style, wouldn't you agree? He wears this crown a lot and the sunglasses sometimes. He's even been know to try to put on Maya's garb a time or two. He also loves the tap shoes!

His new pose includes the tongue-fabulous. I wonder how long this will last.

Updated Kitchen

My Mom got me these cute rugs (2 one in front of the sink and the other in front of the stove) for my kitchen after I washed my old ones and they essentially came apart. Aren't they cute!?! Logan especially likes the "chicken"-I keep telling him it's a rooster, maybe he'll get it someday!

I got these signs on Black Friday. I only went to one store and not until around 1:30 in the afternoon so most of the craziness was over by then. The top one says "Sorry...yesterday was the deadline for all complaints", the little one says "Happy is what you make it always has been always will be", and the vertical one says "Simplify". I think you can read the others pretty well. These are on the breakfast room wall opposite the door to the backyard.

And finally I found this one at the same time. It is by the back door and I thought it was perfect.

We're getting there.

The tree is up and decorated! We got our tree at IKEA-not really the first place you think of to get a Christmas tree, but they have EVERYTHING else, so why not? They run a special program for like two days in December where you can buy a tree for $20.00 (including tax!) and you get a coupon for $20.00 off your purchase in January. We got a 9 ft. Douglas Fir-the kids picked out the type. (That tree anywhere else would have cost way more than twenty dollars!) We didn't even look at it until we got it home because there was a HUGE rainstorm about to pour on us and we still had to get the tree on top of the car before it started. We would have used the truck, but I heard the ad on the radio on the way to pick Maya up from school and there was no time to go get the truck from Daddy at work and then drive to IKEA, get the tree, and not get rained on. Wasn't gonna happen! So off we went (Did I mention Logan fell asleep on the way to pick up Maya-and changing cars would have meant waking him up? Not a good idea.) to get a tree. After it was up on top of the Volvo (wonderful customer service at IKEA) I secured the kids in their seats first and the tree on the roof second and took "least use of freeways" home-WOW! Am I glad there are freeways! I was afraid the tree was going to slide off or something so I didn't want to go too fast. We got it home a long time later and left it on the top of the car for Daddy to get down and set up when he got home-too heavy for my healing back. Maya was a great help in the decorating of the tree and Logan, well, Logan was a great help in the playing with and breaking of a few of the ornaments. He has his own tree in his room that he can touch, and the new rule is "don't touch Mommy's tree".

The gingerbread house has been repaired. The insurance adjuster approved our required items (we found the icing mix at Michael's) and the contractor showed up (between other Mommy duties) and the roof is repaired. That red candy hanging down in the front is supposed to be at the top, but it wasn't going back so we left it.