It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas!

In my house...and on my blog! Do you like my new blogwear?? I think it is pretty cute. I am a CT member for Zoe Pearn Designs at The Sweet Shoppe, and she lets us download her products and show them off for free. The first time I set up my blog by myself, I about pulled my hair out. Her instructions, however, were SO easy!

It is also Christmas in our house and we are really enjoying our tree. We planned to decorate the tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It was a good plan too, b/c the kids really didn't want to leave Foumban, but the plans to decorate for Christmas did give them something to look forward too. The kids helped Daddy organize all the branches by color, and used their imaginations in the process!The kids loved going through all the ornaments again. Grandma often gives them ornaments with their name and date written on it. The kids love to go through the boxes of ornaments to find their own! Kate has several of her own ornaments. Since she is the second oldest, she's collected a few more, not to mention that she was the first girl in our family and she was also born a few days before Christmas. She has a lot of Baby's first Christmas ornaments! She enjoyed finding special spots in the tree for hers.
After we finished the tree, we had a blast making ornaments. I've had some of that crayola air dry clay sitting around for a while and I've made ornaments with it before. It works great. So we dug out the Christmas cookie cutters and went to work creating some new ornaments for our tree.
We used the eraser end of a pencil to make the holes. I think Emma ended up making the most. She really enjoyed it.
Drew used up most of his clay to hand make his own ornament...Rudolph! I think he did a pretty good job for free handing it!
After letting it dry for 24 hours, out came the paint.
The kids loved this part the most I think and some of their creations went from clean and pretty, to messy! haha! (Don't tell them I said that!), but they had a blast, and when all was said and done, they look pretty hanging from a ribbon on the tree. Speaking of tree...Here is a shot of it, along with our 2010 ornament that my Mom brought with her when she visited.

A couple more things before I close out my blog post. I have to share a little treasure that Ben found in town:
It's definitely the little things that make me a happy girl. :D
And another blessing of the day....

I know it doesn't look like it...but it is actually...WATER! Looks Yummy, huh? :D Even as I type this we have our outside taps running to clear out all the muck. I figured that once the water finally came on that it would be pretty gross and I was right! It has mostly cleared at this point, though I wouldn't quite wash dishes with it yet unless I boil it. The plumber informed us that their might be several breaks and mishaps before this new source is hooked up and added to our water line, so we will be keeping all our spare containers filled. Now that I've had a week to practice living without running water...I know that I can manage and I don't think I'll panic as much as I have in the past. I've learned that you can actually live without running water, and we really consume more water than is actually necessary!

Ben and I were laughing today because as soon as the water came in...the power went out. Ben said, "What are we going to do when we get to heaven and we have the river of life running freely for all of eternity...and there will be no power outages because the "SON" is there!" What a great thing to look forward to! I think that our family might have an even greater appreciation for it after this year than ever before!