Fun new Christmas (or NYE) tradition!

So my brother surprised the family with the following as a fun new Christmas tradition this year... but I think it would be a great NYE tradition as well!



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On Christmas eve after dinner, he brought out a box of Floating Sky Lanterns and half a dozen permanent markers and presented each couple with their own lantern (the kids all shared one as well). We were given the instruction to write down our wishes/hopes/goals for the upcoming year on them.



Uncle Andy helping the girls with their list

 The kids list included a trip to Disney, the beach, visiting cousins, Busch Gardens, and other fun excursions. The couples' lists had some more "grown up" hopes and dreams on them. The first item on our list was a NEW HOUSE! PS... we have had an offer on this one house for A WHOLE YEAR. Granted we have looked at other houses in the meanwhile, this house seems to have come full circle so we are hoping with everything we have that this house goes through... and soon! Hubby wanted some more solid expansion plans for his business, and I just wanted to have more date nights and family date events.

Once all the lists were completed, we headed down to the dock to light them off.

How it works is you swing the lantern around (carefully) to get a little bit of air in it and then you light the wick at the bottom and wait until it inflates.

Once you begin to feel the lantern "pull" then you are ready to let it fly and you just let go.

It was a really neat and fun family thing to do!

Elizabeth is HERE!!

After seeing my {revised} due date of December 6-8th come and go I was scheduled to be induced on 12/12/12... how fun is that?! Fortunately... or unfortunately (my mom was really looking forward to 12/12/12/) I started regular contractions on the 11th, so when we got to the hospital at 6pm that night to prep for the following days induction, I was already "halfway there" and having regular contractions.

So instead of hanging around all night, my doc came in and decided to break my water to get the ball rolling.

A couple hours, one Christmas movie (Last Holiday), and one too-late left-side-of-body epidural later, our Lizzie decided to join this world at 10:29 pm on 12/11/12.

The next day was full of the typical boring hospital stuff...

... but the girls got to come and meet their new baby sister! They were thrilled!

After staying in the hospital for a total of 24 hours, we left on 12/12/12 at 6:30pm to head home as a family of 5.

I'm hoping these girls become the best of friends!! So far so good.

It's hard to believe I have a (few hours shy of a) 1 week old!

And here is the last belly shot of this pregnancy :)

Waiting on baby... and crossing off some Christmas to-dos

Here we are... on the last day of my due date range (Dec 6-8)... and NO baby! It's so funny how babies come on their own terms. My 1st was 1 days early and my 2nd was 4 days early. C'mon rugrat, lets go... I've got Christmas to recover for!

Although, my original due date was the 12th... so I think my doc just goofed in updating my due date.

WHILE we've been waiting, we've been running around running errands and knocking some items off of our Christmas To-Do list. We have:

Mailed Christmas letters to Santa at Macy's

Gotten all festive and taken pictures with Santa (and around the yard)

And Decorated some cookies (I have to admit, I am such a perfectionist when it comes to my Christmas cookies I have a hard time letting the girls help... this way they can get as creative [Read: messy] as they want!)

One of these days #3 will make her appearance!

Decorating? Just add greenery!

Ok, as I am STILL waiting for baby to arrive (ok, ok, I'm not even at my due date yet but both other girls were early, so I'm impatient!), I am finishing up some decorating and I wanted to share another small tip!

This year is different; we are in limbo with moving (although we got an update yesterday) so a lot of our stuff is in boxes from when we thought we were FOR SURE moving, so I don't have my usual stuff out. So I was a little worried that my mantle wouldn't look right for Christmas.

Also, we took down our HUGE wall unit where I put my Christmas village and various other Christmas decor is no longer available. AND since we didn't take all of our Christmas decorations down from the attic I am missing some of my prized decorations, bleh. 

That said, here is our mantle (PS, this is the picture from the "Stocking Hanging tip" post). I have a mixture of red and gold glass balls in a globe vase, some red candles, and shiny gold reindeer.

Not too shabby. Actually, somewhat festive.

BUT, just add some live greenery and look what a difference it makes...

 

Here is our full mantle, I don't have a lot of Christmas stuff up, but with the greenery it looks super festive. Plus, it smells awesome and then after the holidays we get to burn the trimmings in the fire place. Win-win. 

 

 

I used the trimmings from our live tree, but you can either go buy some trimmings from places that sell trees OR run by lowes and go through the dumpster by their trees (I did that last year to get some extra trimmings).

Linking up: Our Delightful Home , Sarahndipities, Keeping it Simple