Another busy weekend!

This one seemed even busier than last weekend, but tis' that time of year! This was a very merry busy weekend. Friday night I went to an ornament exchange with about 9 other girls. It was a lot of fun and I came home with this little guy. He is such a Florida ornament, that's why I liked him. I had to "steal" to get him, but he never got taken from me so I was happy.

I made some rice cereal for Elyse this weekend, it was her first time having anything "solid". I paused and reflected for a moment on the fact that absolutely nothing aside from me has nourished her since she was conceived last September. That's over a full year of nothing but mommy and feeding her that first spoonful of something different was a little bitter sweet and another reminder of how fast she changes. We videoed her actually eating, but here's a picture of her in her new space saver high chair with a bib on for the first time. She looked so sinkin' cute!

On Saturday I pampered myself with a hair appointment and came home to prepare for our small group Christmas party that was held at our house. I was proud of myself for making my dish ahead of time and although I was still scurrying around at the last minute to get everything in order before people showed up, it was much more calm than normal because at least the food was taken care of. Last year we had a "sweater" party, this year we did gingerbread houses. There were 5 couples total, one house per couple. One couple had to leave early so we ended up with a little "neighborhood" of 4 gingerbread houses, worthy of the parade of homes in my opinion. I have to admit I was not all that excited to assemble these things. I'm not very creative, crafty, or patient with sticky messes but in the end I must say that it was the most fun I'd had for $10 in a very long time!

Here's our small group (minus Elyse who was asleep already).

The blank pallets awaiting our creative juices.

"Teamwork". Matt was wonderful moral support, but he wasn't very into the decorating aspect, so our house was definitely the most humble of the 4.

I imagine it's how Charlie Brown's would look if he had one. I wasn't very happy with our little house when compared to the others, but that's a good reminder. We had fun making it and I was very pleased until I compared it......life's like that sometimes. Contentment, one of life's most necessary nouns. Our icing is droopy, the deer looks dead, the marshmallow man out front appears to be stumbling into the window and the wreath is crooked.......but out of our "brick" chimney are gum-drop hearts. It is a house full of love. That chimney and those hearts were the first thing we assembled and one of the only parts we did together. I like that. I think it's very symbolic of us. Matt travels often and works long hours while I'm at home taking care of the house, but together we fill it with love. It's the first and most important thing we do.

Here are the 4 houses together in our own little "snow village". I'm still finding coconut snow shaving around my house! Notice the marshmallow deer that just attacked a gingerbread man in the lawn of the bottom right house. Also notice the tree in our yard (bottom left) and compare it to the tree in our yard in the picture before this one. The one in this photo is the tree we really made. The tree was Matt's job and he gave up pretty quickly so for the other picture I borrowed a " neighbor's" tree. To me that is symbolic of our small group, we just help each other out like that. In fact, another "neighbor" felt so sorry for our pitiful little house that he let us use some of his light-up Christmas lights. This is a great group of people to be doing life and gingerbread houses with.

Remember the couple who needed to leave early? Well, we didn't want them to miss all the fun and luckily they lived right up the street, so at 10pm we carried our 4 houses over to their house and left them on their doorstep to greet them the next morning (we knocked on the door that night but they didn't hear it). I felt like a mischievous kid in high school sneaking out and I can only imagine what the cars driving by thought. It was a lot of fun and for a brief moment I forgot how old I was and wondered if it was weird that I enjoyed that so much.

We also did an ornament exchange at this party as well and Matt and I went away with 6 of these little guys, so now our tree is officially full or rodents. Although a little creepy, I'm quite fond of them actually.

On Sunday we went to the later service and then my dad brought over someone special for us to meet. Matt, Elyse, and I enjoyed a late lunch out with my dad and Susan and enjoyed some Oreo Ice Cream dessert afterward at our house. It was a wonderful afternoon and we topped the evening off with a movie under blankets on the couch. One of my favorite parts of the entire weekend is that it was actually cold outside. It made everything we did seem that much more festive and I hope this weather lingers awhile.