Ornaments and Wonderful Memories

Ornaments are very special things.  They are personal. Hand picked. Unique.  I so enjoy unwrapping each one as we are decorating the tree.  Each one holds a memory of a person, a time, an event.  They each have a story to tell.  

When I was a little girl my aunt would make a special ornament for my sister and me every Christmas.   I so enjoy pulling them out each year and remembering when I opened them the first time.  One of my favorites was a nurse ornament she made for me. 

  Through the years my parents have given our new family beautiful glass ornaments.  They are hand blown or really uniquely painted.  They look for the perfect one each year.  

 My husband and I love getting ornaments for our girls and each other as well.  On our honey moon, we stayed in Tahoe.  There was a darling Christmas ornament store there and we bought several ornaments to start our new life together.   Each one holds such good memories.  When my oldest daughter was only 1 1/2 months old, Chris planned a surprise day trip to Tahoe and back just to buy another ornament for our tree.   What memories we have in each special ornament. 

 Now that we have our own children, we carefully pick out ornaments for each of our girls each Christmas.  When they were infants I started taking pictures of them with the ornaments they received that year.

    This year Bekah got a hand painted tree from her Aunt Megan and a purple disco ball from mommy and daddy.

Then Bekah had to get some pictures with her pretty ballerina that she had received the previous year.  She begged me to let her keep the ballerina in her room all year since she couldn't bear to pack her away.  Needless to say, that didn't happen.

Hannah looks so proud of her ornaments.

The girls held our unique ornament from my parents- a glass pine cone.

This is a little off the subject of ornaments but it is some thing I must share.  When you are trying to get kids to look at the camera, have them look right at the center lens of the camera.  Then tell them that they need to look really closely and they will see the camera wink at them.  This is the picture I got as Hannah was looking for the wink.

Hannah was so proud of her bear ornament that she made with her Nana.

Capture the memories!

Funny Sayings

I love seeing the funny things my girls do each day.  They bring me such joy and happiness.  Here are a few of the things that they have said or done that made me laugh.

Bekah likes red apples. She says the green ones are dumb unless they have peanut butter on them, then they are not dumb. I asked her if she meant sour instead of dumb. She did! Love it!

My parents had a surprise birthday for Chris.   My mom made dessert.   Hannah had a peice of cake and some Sherbert ice cream. She then looked up at us and asked us, "Is it too late to have some chocolate?"

Bekah was so sweet on my birthday.  She got her piggy bank down and gave me a quarter and four pennies. Bekah looked at me with such love and told me that I can buy anything I want for my birthday with the money she gave me. I love presents from the heart!!!!

Just found Hannah sound asleep on blankets in her closet. It was so precious to see her sleeping there in her jammies that she "had" to put on for her nap. 

Bekah and Hannah keep telling me that I am so old. They say I am old like a grandma. I asked how old they thought I was. They believe I am 17 years old. I did not correct them.

Daddy to Hannah, "Who is part of our family?"
Hannah, "Wise man, God and baby Jesus!"

Then later Hannah asked, "Why is the sun in the sky?" Daddy explained that the sun made things grow and gave us light. He asked her who put the sun in the sky. Her response, "God did!! Daddy, did you help Him?"

Hannah still has a hard time saying her s's.  I love it when she says she has a _tuffy nose.  Hannah has to use a _tep _tool to stand on.  She _pins around and around the living room and loves to see the _cool bus.  I'll be very sad when she says every thing the right way.  Her little Hannah phrases are so cute.

What to do with your Christmas Cards

What do you do with all your Christmas cards you receive every year at this time?  

I love all the photo cards I received and wanted to do something with them.  For a few years I just saved the photo cards.  Wasn't sure what to do with them.  Then I came up with an idea to display them in my home.  I had my husband put screws in each side of the window and tied ribbon from one side of the window to the other.  Then I hung all the cards on the ribbon as I received them. 

I love seeing all the pictures and cards hanging in my dinning room.  Each one is a reminder of the people I love and care for.

After the Christmas season is over, I take all the photo cards and make them into a collage on the ends of my cabinets.  It is great to see all the people I care about during the year in my kitchen. 

 These are the little clothes pins I use for pinning up the cards. They are so cute!

This years photos are down and ready to mount in my kitchen.

Here are all the pictures from the last couple of years.  Not sure what I'll ever do with them but it is fun to look back at how our friends families have changed.

All the photos stored for safe keeping.

Another years photos up in our kitchen.  The new year can't start until they are up!!

So what are you going to do with your photo cards this year?

Glow In the Dark Slime

While I was on pinterest the other day (ok, almost everyday) Bekah and Hannah were looking at the kids ideas with me. We had fun pinning ideas on my boards. They would see something that they wanted to do and would jump up and down shouting, "Pin it! Pin it!" I'm trying to train them right.

They saw the glow in the dark slime and really wanted to try it. We had everything but the clear glue and the glow in the dark paint. We got the supplies a few days later and had fun making the slime. I don't think it was worth trying to make it glow in the dark. It didn't glow very well, and I wasn't about to let my little girls play with it in a dark room for a long time. We just kept it at the table and had fun.

The girls got to help mix the slime. We split it into two bowls and then just put it on wax paper. They had fun getting the play-doh toys out and making shapes with the cookie cutters. This was a fun activity and the slime keeps well in a jar or bag.

Here is the link to the instructions on making slime.

http://domesticcharm.blogspot.com/2011/10/glow-in-dark-slime.html

Organized Busy Boxes

I love pinterest. Love it! Thank-you Megan for showing it to me and bugging me until I figured it out.


Pinterest has lots of fun things to pin on your wall. . . recipes, photos, links to blogs, craft ideas for the home. I am having so much fun pinning great ideas on my wall from blogs I visit and from other walls.


I found a blog that I enjoy reading called Play at Home Mom. This mom has lots of fun ideas for your kids.

http://playathomemom3.blogspot.com/2011/12/busy-boxes.html

I read this post on her blog and loved the idea of making busy boxes for my girls. I had a large wicker basket full of craft supplies for my children. I liked having everything in one spot, but it was really hard to keep it organized. I like organized everything. So I decided to take the idea of busy boxes and run with it.

This mom made a bunch of boxes for her little one to play with while she was nursing her baby. They had simple things in each one so that a child could take the box and do the activity. One box had paper, water colors, a paint brush and a water container. Another had colored corn with little animals to play with. A third had paper, crayons and rubbing plates. I loved her ideas but I really wanted to have boxes that would help me get organized and make craft time easier. So I bought 6 boxes and started to fill them up. I ended up liking how organized and easy they would be to use that I went back and got 6 more bins the same size, plus one big one.

Here are the boxes that I made. This whole project (besides the driving to the store part) took me only an hour to do.

This was my "I don't know quite where to put this stuff so I'll throw it in here" box. There are supplies to make bubbles, some glitter, clothes pins, silly pudy extra glue. Stuff like that.

This is my cutting stuff up box. It has ribbons and scissors plus glue for doing something with the cut up things

This is the glueing box. I added feathers, pom poms, wooden peices, googly eyes, Christmas tree cut outs (on clearance) and popsicle sticks. Then I put in glue, glue sticks and glitter glue.

Here is the sticker box. I bought a bunch of foam stickers for the girls to use. They love them.

This is the bead box. I dumped all the beads in here for easy access. The girls love to sort the beads so there is an ice cube tray. Plus I added plastic string for making necklaces and bracelets.

Hannah got a present of pretend cookies for Christmas. It has lots of peices and is really fun to play with. However, we all know what happens when you take a toy with lots of peices and put it on the toy shelf-they all get lost and then you have only a part of the toy to play with. Now all the peices are in one box and it is super easy to play and put away.

We now keep all our puzzles in this box. When they are in a puzzle making mode, we get down the box and play.

I put all the toys for our Little People doll house in this box. The other little toys like dinosaurs, mice family and McDonalds toys got added to the box too. They are little and get lost in the toy basket, but will get played with in the doll house and put away if they are all together.

This is our play-doh box. I try to make all our own play-doh. It is super easy to make and saves for a long time. I added the slime we made the other day to our play-doh box too.

Bekah received the Emma and Abigail magnetic wooden dolls for Christmas. Again, a lot of little peices that can easily get lost. Hopefully this will let us have lots of fun and then put it away without loosing all the peices.


I really love having the craft supplies and all the toys with lots of little peices organized. This really only took an hour or so. I would love to hear your ideas for keeping a tidy house.

My Journey to a Healthy Life Continues

Five months ago I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease. Overnight I gave up eating pasta, bread, cookies and most of the food that was currently in my cupboard. This really was the start of a new life. My body began to heal slowly as it was not constantly under the attack of gluten. Shortly after this, I discovered my body was not healthy enough to process most dairy, so this was cut out of my diet as well.

I am still on a quest to be healthy and to feel good. It didn’t just stop with a gluten free diet. I thought that it would, but it didn’t. This is my story.

On a gluten free diet I had to say no to so many yummy things, I thought that I should be able to enjoy all the other gluten free things that I wanted to. I was making cookies and treats and buying lots of gluten free candy so that I didn't feel deprived. I had some good GF (gluten free) bread, rice chips, GF crackers and other high carb, processed food. Life was good.

This fruit platter was for my kids. I now leave off the chocolate on my bowl.

I spend a lot of time on the intranet reading blogs and finding recipes. I found a bunch of great blogs written by others who have stopped eating all the highly processed, high-carb foods and have started eating healthy food. Most of these people did it for the health of them or their children. So many of their stories are similar to mine.

One site I was on was really interesting to me. It is called Lexie's Kitchen. This is about a mom who made some radical changes to her families meals in order to help her toddler live a healthier life due to medical challenges he was having. I started reading stories that were shared on her site by others that had made the switch from processed to whole foods. Since I had made major changes to my diet in order to become healthy, I submitted my story. A bit ago I was hosted on her site as a guest blogger. Here is a link to my story and her website.

http://www.lexieskitchen.com/lexies_kitchen/2011/11/10/making-the-switch-sarahs-story.html#comments



I was feeling good most of the time, but still not all of the time. I had tasted what it feels like to be healthy and I wanted it all of the time. I have been on a path to change my life style so that I can be as healthy as I can. I want to feel good and to have energy to do what ever I want.

My diet had changed in some radical ways, but I could tell that I was still eating things that made me feel sick and sluggish. It wasn’t until after Halloween that I finally figured out what it was. We had made delicious home made caramel apples and caramel popcorn. I was loving the great tasting gluten free food that was supposed to make me feel good, yet I was still feeling so ill. After the second night at work (I work night shift in the NICU) I finally decided I had had enough. I wanted to get healthy. I wanted to feel good.

As I said before, I really liked Lexie’s Kitchen blog and enjoyed reading other people’s stories about how they made the switch from processed to whole foods. About this time I read a story of a lady who had made a radical switch to her diet three years ago. She talked about how and why she tossed out all the processed food and started buying things that she could recognize. Her energy level increased and she started feeling so much better. Her story and the others on this website truely inspired me.

So much so that I began a new phase of getting healthy. I finally decided to stop eating most processed foods and I have now cut out almost all sugar. My diet is mostly veggies (though I do need to work on eating more of them), fruit, meat, safe grains and some dairy.

This was really, really hard to do at first. I love sugar and chocolate and anything sweet. I ate something sweet every day. My body craved it. I couldn’t say no. But I finally got to the point that I wanted to feel good more than I wanted the sweets. So I stopped buying candy and cookies that were safe for me to eat and were tempting me. That night I decided to make the switch so I took my two little girls and my sweet sister in law, Shonna, to Trader Joes. I loaded up the basket with veggies, fruit, nuts, dried fruit, eggs and salad. I started eating these good things instead of the processed food I used to eat.

For those of you who are interested here is a glimpse of my current diet.
Breakfast: GF Oatmeal with raisons or craisins and a touch of honey. Corn tortillas with eggs and cheese. Fresh or frozen fruit smoothies. Occasional GF cereal (mostly GF Chex). And of course hot cocoa (Lactaid milk) with a bit of sugar and cocoa powder.
Lunch: Left over dinner. Chicken tacos. Salad. Fruit. Smoothies.
Dinner: Home made dinner every night. Mostly lots of different chicken recipes. GF pizza crust with my toppings (super yummy), Beef-any way you can make it, Rice, veggies, fruit, salad. Occasionally we have GF pasta with pesto, alfredo or spagetti sauce (all home made).
Snack: Fruit leather, nuts/seeds, fruit, chips and hummus, carrots, celery with peanut butter, dried fruit, mozzarella cheese stick.

It has been four weeks since I changed my diet to a truely healthy one. The cravings are gone. I don’t want or need sugar every day. My body has more energy and the sugar highs and lows are gone. I love feeling like this. It is amazing! I truely wish I could go back and do it all again.

I would really love to hear your story. What changes have you made to get healthy? How have they impacted your life? Your families life? Feel free to share it in the comments or with a link to your own blog.

Sit a Spell: Weepy, Wonderful Saturday: Ross King: God Undefeatable

Sit a Spell: Weepy, Wonderful Saturday: Ross King: God Undefeatable


Thank-you for sharing. I have never heard of him. I listened on itunes, then bought every album they were selling of his. Love his music and love the lyrics. Awesome!

Happy Birthday Hannah!!

Dear Hannah,
Oh my sweet lovable, cuddly little girl. I am so, so glad that you came into our hearts and our home. I was so thrilled when I found out your little life had been placed within me. It was an Easter morning. Bekah, your big sister was 1 1/2 years old. We had just gotten back from church and all our family was here. I took the pregnancy test and immediately told your daddy that you were coming. He was speachless for a minute and then was so happy. When everyone was gathered in our living room I picked up Bekah and told her she was going to be a big sister. Little by little all around the room our family realized that mommy was pregnant. It was a fun day, filled with such joy because of you.

You grew in mommy's tummy and I loved every minute of it. Ok, I didn't love the morning sickness. I did love feeling you kick and flip inside of me. Around 22 weeks, I was working in the NICU at night time and I started having 8-9 contractions an hour. It stopped when I rested and so I thought nothing more of it. Right after that our family went to Colorado to visit Taeya, Aunt Megan and Uncle Phil. You got to go white water rafting with mommy and enjoy doing lots of fun things. Aunt Megan and Taeya came here to visit after we visited them. We went to the beach and got to go camping. All was well until my first night back to work. Mommy started having a bunch of contractions. I was taking care of a very sick baby and couldn't leave him. I really thought all was fine even though a contraction came every time I moved. After sleeping, I was still having contractions. Daddy took me to the hospital to make sure you were ok and were not coming early. I was 26 weeks pregnant with you.

That night you tried very hard to come. I lay in bed feeling the contractions tighten my abdomen. I prayed and prayed that God would keep you safe inside until you were much bigger. I was scared. Scared that you would come and need a lot of help to stay alive. That night and every night after I gave you to God. I told Him that I really wanted to have you safe in my arms and have you healthy. I know that you are and always have been completely in His hands. I surrendered your life to Him. If He wanted me to take you home and raise you to honor Him, then He would spare your life. If He wanted you to be in heaven with Him, then He could take you and I wouldn't fight. God gave me such peace after I gave you to Him 100%. I still prayed every day, every hour, sometimes every minute, that you would be ok. But I knew that I didn't have to worry. We had so many people in the church praying for your little life. Your tiny body was covered in prayer for many, many weeks. What a blessing.

Mommy spent the next 10 weeks in the hospital or at home on bed rest. That was hard for mommy to sit still. I never have liked to be still. God allowed me the patience to rest my body so that you could grow and get stronger. He worked in my heart as well and showed me so many blessings that He was giving me. Everyone from the church was wonderful. Since I wasn't allowed to get off the couch, I couldn't take care of Bekah or the house. One to two people came every single day to take care of us. God blessed me with their love and their encouragement. I was given so many blessings. I would never have chosen to go through what I did, but God showed me that He had a purpose and was working in my heart to make me what He wanted me to be.

Then you decided it was time to be born. You were a little early at 35 weeks, but much better than 26 weeks. After 20 hours of labor, you were born. Since you were little they took you to the warmer to check you out. My heart was so overflowing with joy when you started crying. The sound of your sweet, little cry was music to my ears. I was able to hold you for a minute before you went to the NICU to get a bit of help. That was one of the best moments of my life. You were born and were so darling.

You had to spend 12 days in the NICU as your lungs healed and you got stronger. I loved every minute that I spent with you. Hannah darling, you loved being held and cuddled. Then we finally got to bring you home. What a great day that was. You fit into our family like you had always been there. I don't know how we made it until you in our lives. You bring us such joy.

I have loved every moment that you have been in my life. I love the way you love to snuggle and cuddle. You are never as happy as when you are able to sit in our laps. It doesn't matter what we do with you, you just like being with us. We read to you, tell you stories, sing to you and tickle you. You love it and so do we.

It has been a fun three years seeing you grow into a beautiful, sweet little girl. You learned to talk quite early and you keep us laughing with all the things you say. I love seeing how you see the world. Hannah, you love talking and singing (quite off key) but we love it. You can't say your s's very well. I love it when you sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. You sing sweetly, "Twinkle, twinkle, little Tar. . . Like a diamond in the Ky." Daddy and I just sit and giggle while we listen.

You just started Cubbies and you love getting to memorize and say your verses. The first time you were going to say your verse to your teacher, you were just a little shy. She could see that you knew it but just did not want to say it. Papa Karl came into the room. You ran right over to him and said all your verses perfectly. That made me laugh. The next week, you were braver and said them right away.

One of the things you say that I love is, "If I don't want to eat my food, then I don't have to. If I want to I can. But if I don't want to then I won't". You often say, "If I am disobedient, you still love me." Oh how true that it, sweet one.

You have such a compassionate heart for the things of God. The other day we were talking about a lady that lives in Africa and takes care of a lot of orphans and people that need God's love. I showed you the picture of the lady surrounded by some of the kids that she took care of. One of the little boys didn't have a shirt and you asked why. I explained that many of those kids only have one set of clothes. Maybe the little boy didn't even have a shirt. Hannah, you looked at me with such serious eyes and said, "Mommy, we need to pray right now that God would give that boy clothes. He needs to have clothes." So you did. I love seeing how you are so touched by the needs of others, even as a two year old. Every day, you pray when we eat. You always say, "Dear Jesus, Mommy-I don't know the words. What do I say? (then you pray for our missionaries) Bless this food to our bodies. Amen!!" You care about those we pray for and ask about them often.





Sweet little one, I Iove you so much. My favorite time of the day is your bedtime. Every evening I put you to bed. You get your jammies on and ask to be rocked. I love how you snuggle with me. I always ask you what was the best part of your day. Things you have said: "I didn't go anywhere today." "Going to the Park." "Cubbies!" "Giving you hugs and kisses when you got home in the morning was the best part of my day." Sometimes you sing to me. Then you climb into your bed-all by yourself. I cover your up with at least three blankies, then put your music and crickets on. You have to give me a hug and a kiss or you won't go to sleep. Often, you tell me that I can wipe off the just the slobbery parts. After you give me a kiss, you blow on it three times so that I can't actually wipe of the real kiss. I love it when you do that.



You are such a sweet girl and I love you so much. I absolutely love it when I come home from work and you are at the window jumping up and down screaming my name. I walk in the door and you run over to me and jump into my arms and cover me with kisses. That is the best part of my day. I love you and am so glad that I get to watch you grow up into the amazing girl that God is making you into.

Love,
Your Mommy