Hello all.  I hope everyone had a good holiday season.  Ours was wonderful and filled with much time spent with family and lot's of good food.  Then just after the new year hubby had to take a truck down to the states for a few days to get some work done on it.  He wasn't sure what he was going to do down there for the couple of days that the truck was getting worked on and it was suggested that I go with him.  I wasn't too sure about leaving the kids but it did sound like a nice break.  So Grandma(s) and Auntie volunteered were coerced into watching the little ones while hubby and I took off for a few days.  We went skiing for one day at Red Lodge.  They didn't have a lot of snow but it was nice to get out there for a day and best of all there was no hospital trips involved.  We also went out for a couple of lovely relaxing meals, did some shopping (much more fun with no kids in tow), spent some time in the hotel hot tub, and went on a hike.  As you can see hubby still is a bit of a kid as he had fun jumping from rock to rock on our hike.

Thanks to all who made our little getaway possible.  

Happy New Year!

Yes, I realize that New Years Day was a few days ago but today was the girls first day back at school after the holidays so it feels like now is the start of the new year.  I hope everyone had a good holiday.  Ours went quite well.  We ate too much food, got lot's presents, and played a lot of games.  It was great to have a lot of our family come and visit.  While nobody was able to stay very long, it was kind of nice to see everyone without having to travel.  We did travel for the New Year's weekend to my sister-in-laws place (about a 3 1/2 hour drive).  The roads were good and we made use of our vans DVD player so the trip was no hardship.  The girls really enjoyed playing with all their cousins there.  We did go skating a few times over the holiday as well which is always fun and it was good to get out and get some exercise to offset all the eating we were doing.

  Star and Sky at the skating rink.

            LK was happy to hang out and watch us skate.

So with the new year comes of course New Year's resolutions.  I don't always make New Years resolutions (and never actually keep them) but I do like to have some goals that I am working on and the new year does seem like a good place to start.  I did find it hard to pick what I wanted to work on for this year as there is so much I would like to go.  I decided to work on establishing 3 daily habits that always seem to make the rest of my day go smoother but they always seem to go undone when things get busy.

The three daily habits that I want to establish are:

1. A prayer/meditation time.
2. Exercise.
3. Doing the dishes each night so as to wake up to a clean kitchen.

At this point I am not worried about how long or productive #'s 1 & 2. I just want to establish the habit of doing these things daily.  I plan to keep track on a calendar the days I reach this goal. 

In addition I will be posting some monthly goals.  This month my goal is to clean and declutter the master bedroom.  This room is somewhat of a dumping ground and I really need to go through, get rid of stuff I no longer need/wear and give it a good cleaning.  It has gotten so bad that sometimes when I ask the girls to clean their room they say, "But your room isn't clean, so why do we have to clean ours."  Eeeek, time to get that cleaned up and lead by example.

Also this month I want to work on LK's first year scrapbook.  I can't believe that his 1st birthday is rapidly approaching.  I would like to get this book mostly complete this month.

There you have it.  My new year's resolution and some monthly goals for January.  I will check in at the end of the month and let you know how it is going.

Do you make New Year's resolutions?  What are you working on this year?

O Christmas Tree

Star and Sky decorating the Christmas tree.

Today we put up our Christmas tree.  The girls have been asking for weeks to put it up.  It is one of our favorite Christmas things to do.  Daddy sets up the tree and puts on the lights.  Then we let the girls do all the decorating.  They love looking through the ornaments and finding their favorites.  Also we have a lot of homemade ornaments that they have made through the years and they always seem to remember who made what.  (Amazing considering they can never remember to pick up their socks even after being reminded a thousand times.)  Our tree is definitely not fancy but fun.

We have a small artificial tree that we put up.  I love the smell of a real Christmas tree but they can be a little pricey here on the prairies.  This small tree we inherited from my Aunt and it is really old but it still works.  It doesn't take up too much room which is nice as our living room is full!!  Also we can put it up a little higher so hopefully LK doesn't knock it over.  We may get a real tree again in a future year but this is working for us this year.

Last year I bought this Little People Nativity Set as our other one was quite destroyed.  If you have little ones I highly recommend this or some other nativity set that they can play with, without doing much damage to it.  Kids love to play with the figures and act out the Christmas story.

Star setting up the Nativity Set under the tree.

LK playing with the Nativity Set.

That really is the extent of the decorating we do.  We hang our stockings up and have a few other odds and ends that we put out; but the real highlight is the Christmas tree and Nativity set. 

Now that the decorating is done I just have to focus on keeping the place neat and clean which is always a challenge for me.