Merry Christmas

From our family to yours!

We hope you have a blessed Christmas filled with food, family and fun.

The Zoo

We had the chance to go the zoo recently and we had so much fun.  Thankfully it wasn't too cold and it was a beautiful day for us.

Eli had fun watching the giraffes from a distance, but wasn't exactly sure what to think of them up close.

Here's Doug telling him about the rhino.

He really liked the playground they have at the zoo and we spent quite a while swinging and sliding and climbing.

His two favorite things were the Patagonian Cavies and the squirrel monkeys.  The cavies were actually pretty interested in Eli too and one of them followed him down the fence!

 Here we are watching the squirrel monkeys.

After our trip to the zoo, I can't wait to have more adventures with my little family!

Pinterest Projects

I have been getting a lot of craft ideas from Pinterest lately.  Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to actually do many of the projects though.

But this weekend Doug and I set out to get a few started and finished, and last night we actually finished one of the three we started :)

Inspiration from here. I am sooo happy with how it turned out!  We don't have a fireplace so in the past we've always hung our stockings on the entertainment center.  It worked, but wasn't ideal because the stockings blocked most of the electronics, making it very difficult to turn the volume up and down or play a movie.  And this year, since Eli is up and moving, I was worried about him pulling the stocking holders down on himself.  We even threw in a couple extra knobs in case we need more stockings later.

The other two projects are gifts and in varying degrees of completion, but here's a little sneak peak:

My three projects, being painted

One project is a picture family tree, these little blocks will hang below the large piece with pictures of family members.  I got the inspiration from here, but mine is very different.

This is the top part of the picture family tree and a little peek at the 3rd project.

I wish I had time to do more things like this.  I've been having so much fun creating and tweaking them to be exactly the way I see them in my mind.

Memories

Shortly after Logan was born Doug had to go back to work.  We were looking at a long hospital stay and decided that it would be better for Doug to take time off when it was time to take Logan home than to use his vacation days sitting in the hospital.  Since Doug was missing so much, I was tasked with taking at least one picture per day and at least one video per week.  Looking back, I'm so thankful we set up those rules because we probably wouldn't have nearly as many pictures if we hadn't.

When I was pregnant with Eli I decided that it would be a good idea to set the same rules for Eli, one picture per day and one video per week.  I started out with good intentions and took a lot of pictures and made several videos, but before long days passed with no pictures.

To tell the truth, I've been feeling pretty guilty about it.  I mean, we have tons more pictures of Eli than we do of Logan, but that's because we had so little time with him.  I feel guilty because I made it such a priority to take pictures of Logan and I just haven't with Eli.

But it occurred to me last night, as I was on the floor playing with Eli... life is for living, not documenting.  Sure I'll cherish the pictures we have of him, but when I'm looking back on my life I want to have memories of rolling on the floor with him, big hugs and rocking him to sleep, not memories of watching him play through the lens of my camera.  I'm taking pictures in my mind every step of the way.  They won't be put in a scrapbook or hung on my walls, but they'll be cherished just the same.