Our Home for the Holidays

Today is my last day at work until the 4th (Tim has sort of been off this week and he is off all next week, too).  We're busy preparing everything for the holiday.  As in the past, we're hosting Xmas Day and going to Nana & Papa's house on Xmas eve.  We're looking forward to having everyone together for holiday this year (and thankful the "significant snow storm" the incompetent weather peeps were suggesting earlier this week isn't going to turn up after all.  So they say now . . . ).

I did a post like this a couple of years ago.  I thought it would be fun to show everyone how our house is decorated for the holiday this year.    A lot of the decorations are the same, but I tried to add in a few new ones this year. 

We once again have our house decorated (notice the new tiny tree in the front yard?  It looks nice all lit up!).   If you are in Central Ohio, we highly recommend The Light Before Christmas -- this is the 3rd year we've used them to decorate the exterior of our home and have had a great experience every time.  (and trust me, it is worth every penny!). 

I made a new wreath for the front door.  I'm obsessed with using yarn for different items.  I posted about it the craft blog . . . I love how it turned out.

Speaking of yarn, I also made a few yarn trees for the mantel using styrofoam tree forms.

I bought a new tablecloth at Target for our Santa party we hosted earlier this month.  For the centerpiece I made a felt ruffle tree.  And Ashley decorated a gingerbread house with the kids one day, so that fits in nicely as well. 

My Charlie Brown Christmas figures have found a home in B&K's playroom.  Tim said it would be a "disaster" and yes, they don't always end up this pretty at the end of the day.  But B&K (especially Bennett) freaken love Charlie Brown, which makes me so very happy.  B calls it "Charlie Brownie" and Chuck is his favorite character (with Linus an appropriate 2nd).  They know all of the characters and we've watched the special several times.  I also have the CB soundtrack and when a song from it comes up on my iTunes playlist they get so excited.   So cute! 

I mentioned before that this year we are hosting an elf . . . his name is Boyd.  He sure has had a lot of fun hanging out all over our house, keeping a very close eye on B&K!

I made a point to decorate the playroom as well.  I downloaded this print from my new all time favorite craft blog, had it printed at Costco and bought a cheap frame at Michael's.  Total cost for this print was under $10 and I love it!  The place mats are from PBK and the reindeer Tim has had for ages (Xmas Elmo now hangs out on the table as well, but me must have been off singing Jingle Bells when I was snapping pictures). 

We are blessed with many, many friends from ALL over the country.  I wanted to do something so I could display the beautiful photo cards we receive this year (and so B&K could look at the pictures of all of their friends).  I ended up taking some more yarn (go figure!) and braiding it into a long tail.  I tacked it to the top of our doorway with a pin and bought mini close pins at the craft store.  We now have THREE of these tails in doorways to our kitchen & playroom (not to mention I have a stack of non-photo cards in a basket in the kitchen as well). 

This little reindeer is something Tim had from his single days.  He now hangs out above the TV in the play room.  B&K love "Rudolf".  

These little guys hang out on the french doors from the playroom to the living room.  They were a gift from my Secret Angel, Allison, last Xmas.  B&K love to say good morning to them every day (and suprisingly, they leave them alone!  I have yet to see them come off the door!). 

At Thanksgiving Aunt Nanci & Uncle Ted brought B&K the snowman & snowgal seated in their chairs.  B&K love, love, love them as well! 

And lastly, our tree in the living room.  We ended up buying a smaller tree last year and I purchased some shatterproof ornaments (that, let me tell you, look JUST like - if not nicer - than our other glass ones!).  This year we added in some family / fun ornaments and B&K each have 2 special ornaments on the three that they repeatedly like to take off & put on (I found that by giving them each a couple -- one of which they made in school -- they leave all the other ones alone!). 

I'm sure B&K will miss a lot of these decorations when we take them down next week.  Good thing they'll have lots of new "distractions" from Santa, I'm sure! 

We hope everyone has a safe & happy holiday!



Preschool Holiday Program

We attended B&K's preschool Christmas program last week.  Let me tell you -- it was HILARIOUS!  Bless the ladies who have the patience to "teach" 2.5 - 5 yr olds!!  The school split the program into two sessions, so the little ones went first.  B&K looked adorable, if I do say so myself (major kudos to Ashley for fixing Kendyll's hair.  I don't have any great pics from the front, but here you can see it from behind):



Kendyll wasn't really feeling the performance.  She sort of stood there in awe for most of the program (which is the opposite of what she does at home.  Normally she is the first to break out into song at the dinner table - or in bed - and she'll do the full-on hand motions with it).  Bennett, on the other hand, was all about perfecting his jazz hands.  K is on the left of the screen (first row, 2nd from the left) and Bennett is more towards the middle right in the front row.  I'll spare you the WHOLE show and just give you this little snippet:

After the program B&K received a present (a holiday book) from their teachers.  All-in-all a very fun night. 



Super Heroes!

Tim & I are on a much needed break -- off to Vegas for our annual trip (and thanks to his nutso travel schedule this year the flights & hotel are free!).  But no fear . . . while we are gone Super Bennett & Super Kendyll are here to save the day!!









{sorry for the blurred photos -- it is hard to keep a super hero still for a photo while s/he is in action!}



Back in September I won these awesome capes from the Columbus Mother of Twins Club blog.  They are made by BabyPop designs and I have since found this to be one of my favorite gifts to give as well (we ordered one for Super Ava for her birthday).     You never know when a super hero will need to be called to action . . . now B&K (and Ava) are always prepared!

Happy Merry Christmas!! {shutterfly cards}

From our family to yours, have a Happy Merry Christmas!! (or whatever holiday you celebrate!).

Here is one of the two cards we ordered from Shutterfly -- to say I love them is an understatement.  They are so very, very, very, very, very awesome and my most favorite holiday cards we've ever sent.  :D

Happy Merry Christmas 5x7 folded card

Make a statement with custom Christmas cards at Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

A Visit with Santa

My good friend Mary happens to have a very close connection to Santa Claus.  She was able to arrange for us to have a visit with him last year and it was so very special.    I started planning another visit for this year way back in the summer (so unlike me to be so on top of things!!).  And I'm so excited to say the event was a blast!!  We kept it pretty intimate (which is sometimes hard to do when most of my friends have more than one child!).  We were joined by our closest friends and the brunch was such a wonderful time (though some of our besties were very sick and couldn't make it . . . we send major get well wishes out to them!!)

{And I have to throw a major shout-out to my mom & Aunt Anna Marie.  Tim ended up having to travel overseas for work again, so I foolishly thought I could pull off all of the prep and gifts and crafts and food and toddler wrangling for the brunch myself.  But boy . . . having 2 sets of extra hands around was SUCH an amazing help.  There is NO way the party would have been such a success if it weren't for them.  So thank you!!!}

My aunt helped with the photography while I was drinking my mimosa socializing.   And I wanted to include them all since Tim is still out of town and hasn't seen them yet (and be warned -- if I get my act together you may just all be bored with some video from the event, too!).

Things to note:

•  We are lucky enough to have a Santa's elf staying with us this holiday season.  His name is Boyd.  You'll see a picture of him in the montage.
• Unlike last year (or even last weekend at the mall), Kendyll LOVED Santa.  I mean, freaken L-O-V-E-D Santa.   You'll notice she is in almost every picture with him.  That's because she wouldn't leave his side.  And I apologize to all of our guests who probably have to crop K out of their family photos with Santa.  She was really, really attached to him.
• Everyone made Santa pictures while at the party (thanks to Ashley picking up supplies).  I've been told by Mary that Santa will be hanging the pictures in his workshop.  So cool!
• I want to give another major shout-out to Jenn's husband Jason.  Originally the party was to include other dudes, but illness, travel and other unforseen circumstances caused him to be the only male there (well, over 3 years old and besides the guest of honor).  So J -- I'm sorry!  I promise we will do an adults only event -- including husbands!! -- very soon!  You are a trooper!

Enjoy the show!

"Visit with Santa"

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Sweet sweet Black Friday

If you know me in real life or through FB you know I hate people.  I mean, I work in HR, I have freak show twins who draw lots of attention and people drive me nuts.  So I would be the last person on Earth you would think loves Black Friday, right??  Oh man, it is my most favorite day of the year!

For the past few years the ladies would go out at the pre-butt crack of dawn to do our shopping.  In recent history we've traveled down to the outlet mall and scored major deals without messing with big crowds because we timed it just right.  It was fabulous.

This year turned into a year of mega doorbusters and all nighters.  And it was SO MUCH FUN!!  We started Thanksgiving evening with our normal routine of looking through ads and strategizing our shopping plan.  My mother-in-law, mom and I decided to do Toys-R-Us when it opened at 10pm and then we would head home, sleep a bit and then go as a bigger group down to the outlets.  Well, I'll save all the gory details but we ended up waiting in line in the freezing cold rain for 2 hours to get in to shop for about 5 min.  But it was fun and we scored what we wanted (thanks to my friend Marie who was also shopping at TRU at another location . . . we were timed about the same distance in line and we were able to score something from her list and she scored something from ours.  All about teamwork!).

After that excitement we decided to just go for it and stay up & shop all night.  I dropped my mom off at home (she is the smart one) and I put on some dry clothes and headed out to pick up Debbie again.  We tooled around a bit waiting for Target to open (like we tried to shop in Old Navy, but with a line 1.5 hrs to check out we wisely decided we didn't need anything from ON that badly so we ended up going out for a bite to eat).

On our Target list was a new 40 in TV for the playroom (which we had no chance of getting since we decided not to wait in line outside in the freezing cold for 3+ hours), a new Dyson (which is something I've wanted for a LONG time) and a few other smaller items like slippers & such.  We got in line about 15 min before the doors opened with the expectation that we would be leaving with just the slippers.  But thanks to a couple of random acts of kindness from strangers we scored this




AND this


So very awesome.  And totally fun.  I think I'm still high from the rush of Black Friday shopping!! (sadly, the outlet mall wasn't all that this year.  Yes, we did still go down there and yes Debbie & I were up for some 30+ hours). 

But oh how I love the Dyson!!  Look -- this is how much Tabasco hair it picked up on my first swipe (and this was AFTER a very recent sweeping with our old vacuum).  Awesome!




We are already stoked to plan for next year.  We definately want to do the doorbusters again -- and yes, we are crazy! 

Let's Play Catch-up {aka belated Thanksgiving update}

Holy Moly, as Bennett would say!  I know this update is much delayed, but things have been VERY busy around here (as you'll see from the shit-ton of posts I have scheduled to hit here over the next week or so). 

So to catch every one up . . .

We hosted Thanksgiving.  This year we had a total of 14.  Us, my parents, brother Mark, Tim's parents, Tim's Aunt Nanci, Uncle Ted, Aunt Elaine, Uncle Brian and cousin Brian.  Whew. 

The weekend involved a bit of hanging around

And drinking {for the record, Bennett is drinking WATER with Tim & Nick}

Relaxed and vegged out

And played with our family

It was a wonderful weekend!  And Black Friday was amazing this year.  But more to come on that one next . . .