Random Acts of Busyness

The last couple of months and a half has been super busy for us.  I don't think that we've had a single weekend since Thanksgiving where we didn't have something planned or somewhere to go.  I have loved catching up with old friends and seeing people that I don't get to see often at this time of year.   But it has left me with little time to catch up on my blogging and getting organized.  That is one area of my life that I want to work on. 

Here are some things that we've done over the couple of months:

Thanksgiving

I didn't really do a thanksgiving post, mainly because I have had some issues with my camera, and most of the time, I forget to pull it out but instead I am living life without capturing those wonderful moments.  I did get some of Jaycee playing in the leaves, since it was amazingly beautiful out, can't believe it was so nice in Kansas the end of November.  Jaycee is my best subject to take pictures of.  We spent the morning and afternoon at my grandma's house out on the farm.  They have a lot of room outside to run and play and lots of leaves, cats, and a dog for Jaycee to chase and manhandle.  She loves those cats, but I'm not sure how they feel about her, but they were pretty tolerable of how she would try to pick them up and carry them around the yard.  We ate too much food, watched football, and played some card games.  I even got my parents to join in with us. 

Wedding

One of my roommates from college got married the beginning of December.  My senior year, six of us got the chance to live in the nearly new (only a year of two old) dorms.  It was more of large apartment with three bedrooms and a great living room where we all hung out a lot.  Those were some great times.  I remember playing football (powder puff) with most of the girls, and the ones who didn't play were our biggest supporters.  So I got the chance to see most of them at my friend Gail's wedding.  She looked amazing and it was such a beautiful December day. 

 

 

 

Family Pictures

So I have loved seeing everybody's family pictures on facebook this year.  I get so inspired when looking at the types of pictures, locations, and family attire that people choose for their family pictures.  I got the name of a wonderful young woman from a friend of a friend on facebook.  Since I was a little late in figuring out when we would have a free weekend, she was so kind of take our family pictures last weekend.  We went to Hesston at the Arboretum there.  Now it has been several years since I have been there, but we had a beautiful setting to take our family pictures.  Actually, this same place is where Tom and I had our engagement pictures about 12 years ago.  It was neat to see how things changed and the different new settings they now have. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas Decorating

I took a minimalist view on decorating this year.  We do have two Christmas trees, one that is small and sits on a table where Jaycee puts her handmade ornaments, and they our tree which has no presents under it yet.  They are in the basement, but not wrapped or anything.  Still needing to do that sometime soon.  We also have a small assortment of icicle lights just above our porch.  Jaycee had a lot of fun helping me put up the tree and lights, and our ornaments are hung in a sporadic fashion, but it is fun to see how she lights up when the  tree is strung up with beads, lights, and other ornaments.  She did notice and point out to me that most of the ornaments we have are snowman related.  I never really paid much attention to it, but she kept handing them to me and saying "snowman, another snowman".  It was funny!!! 


Christmas Music

This hasn't taken up much of our time, but I just have a couple of funny stories to share.  The first one is that in our area one of the local radio stations start playing only Christmas music from Thanksgiving day until Christmas day.  Usually I have a radio playing when Jaycee takes naps and goes to bed.  It is set with a timer and goes off after so many minutes.  I guess that there are some Christmas songs that they like to play more often than others.  One morning or maybe it was after Jaycee woke up from a nap, she was sitting in her bed all by herself singing, "Last Christmas I gave you my heart, but the very next day you gave it away."  She continued to sing most of the rest of the song.  I couldn't believe that of all the awesome Christmas songs that is the one she remembers.  Another funny story about music, that doesn't necessarily have to do with Christmas music is that for anyone who knows me well and has gotten to see the side of me that lets loose a little, I love to jam and rock out, especially to really fun and rockin music.  Well, a friend lent me her Mandisa cd a while ago, and I have been playing it a lot in the car mostly.  When the radio stations started to play Christmas music, I thought that I'd give Mandisa a rest and listen to some Christmas music.  But Jaycee just wasn't going to stand for that.  Every time we get in the car, I would have Christmas music playing, and I would hear this little voice from the backseat say, "Mandisa please mommy?"  She loves to jam just like her mommy.  What a fun little girl she has become.