A Jolly Christmas

I have to say that this was the best Christmas ever. We were surrounded by family, friends, good food, and the Spirit of Christ as we celebrated his birth. Matt's family came over on Christmas Eve and we enjoyed a yummy ham dinner and desserts, a Christmas story, games, and a movie in our new theatre room (which was Matt and I's very grande Christmas gift to each other). His parents and little brother spent the night and it was really nice to wake up with a house full of people. Rylan and I were the first ones up on Christmas morning, so we got breakfast ready. My mom would always prepare a large spread of foods for breakfast and that's a tradition that I want to carry on. We had breakfast casserole, almond ring, sliced oranges and grapefruit, cinnamon rolls, and cinnamon toast with jam and Dutch/Gouda cheese (sounds like an odd combo but it's seriously the best!). I figured that this would be the last Christmas that we could eat breakfast before presents so I took full advantage. Presents came next. Rylan liked this part. We would tear a piece of wrapping paper so a small part of the gift underneath was exposed and he would eagerly try to play with the toy through the small hole of the paper. It was pretty funny. He got lots of toys from both grandparents and had fun playing with them all day long. The rest of the day consisted of leftover food and relaxing. It was a perfect Christmas. Here are some pictures from throughout the month as we celebrated this holiday season.

Rylan did not like the real life Santa this year. The only Santa he liked were the blow up ones on people's lawns. In fact he absolutely loved those kind of Santas, but the real thing was scary.

Yay the Christmas tree is up!

Me and some church friends volunteering at the Toys for Tots fun run. I want to do this every year.

My good friend Emily and I like to walk through McCallister park together. We decided to take some pics of Rylan since the leaves were so beautiful.

Our not so glamorous family photo on Christmas morning.

Rylan got a little frustrated with this toy. He wanted to stop the balls from popping up so he'd just stick his hand down the popper and take the balls out himself.

Dreams Coming True

Matt's childhood dream was to have a movie room in his house someday. Well he's worked really hard and has finally earned his movie room. When we saw our house for the first time, the layout was exactly what we were looking for. Everything was all on one floor with the exception of a large open space upstairs. We both envisioned this to be the perfect space for a movie room. We love the transformation from boring and blah to cozy and chic. There were a couple roadblocks that slowed us down on this project, but nothing we couldn't handle. Like when our non-returnable couch didn't fit through the doorway and Matt had to cut a hole in the wall and when I spent an hour trying to disassemble the non-returnable table so I could get it to fit in my car. We did learn our lesson to measure before we purchase next time. My dad was here the week that we put this room together and he was a huge help. He practically painted the entire room and built me some really nice shelves. We love this space and can't wait to share it with friends and family. I think we will be spending lots of time up here!

Before

After

The hole that Matt cut so we could fit the couch through the doorway

The shelves my dad made

In the Swing of Things

I had my concerns about being a stay at home mother and getting bored, missing my job, losing all contact with adults, not feeling like I can spend money since I don't make any of it myself, etc. To my greatest relief none of those concerns are really concerns any more. Work hasn't even crossed my mind (although I do miss my friends from work, I don't miss the work itself one tiny bit!). In fact, there are so many things that I can actually enjoy now that I'm not working that I've made a list of some stay at home mommy perks:

• Unlimited amounts of time with Rylan and seeing him reach new milestones before someone else sees it first (specifically day care workers).
• Not waking up to the sound of an annoying alarm clock.
• Sleeping in. I still get up around 7:30am, but that's sleeping in as far as I'm concerned.
• Working out at my leisure.
• Having friends and family visit on a weekday without worrying about whether I have the vacation time to use.
• Hanging out with friends during the day.
• Actually getting to see and be in the sun and get some much needed Vitamin D
• Taking naps
• No more Mondays!
• I can finally do all the home projects that I didn't have time for before
• There's time to study and prepare my church lessons during the week (I still left this week's lesson to the last minute though).
• Chores can be completed during the day so I can enjoy the evenings and weekends with Matt and Rylan
• Cooking is fun again. We eat a hot homemade dinner together most nights of the week. Yay!