Hi all!  So much is going on lately!  First off, let me tell you, I made these amazing Chewy Chocolate Chip Gingerbread Cookies and I am attempting to eat one as I type.  They're from Martha Stewart's site--and I know there are a lot of mixed feelings about that woman out there.  All I can say is, every recipe I have ever made from her website has turned out fabulous.  When I'm bored of the same old recipes or am feeling a bit creative, I search through her site's recipe finder.  I can't say anything about Martha herself, I don't know anything about her other than what the media has portrayed (and how trustworthy is that, really?), but I'm always up for good food, and I say go to her site if you want to make good food!

Our house is coming along.  I just created a page of pictures to show you all!  We drive by nearly every day to take pictures.

In my last blog I mentioned what a rough day it had been.  Well lately, naptimes have been more challenging.  All three boys are in the same room, and we like it that way, but sometimes we have to separate them at naptime so they don't wake each other up.  I took this precious picture of our 3 year old, Kaleb, asleep on the couch the other day:

Isn't he cute??

So, our family went to get our tree, and decorated it all up.  Here's a photo  of us (though I think the kid who kindly took a photo of us turned the flash on, and it was bright out, so it isn't a super good picture!):

We didn't go to the mountain and cut our own.  We've got 3 kids ages 4, 3, and 2--and while it might be a great experience for them and for us, neither of us have ever done that before, we weren't prepared for it, we didn't have a lot of time, and well, we just wanted to get a tree!  :)  We got a small one this year, because we're in a rental as our house is being built, and we don't have a lot of space.  It's a nice small tree though--much better than the dried out dud that we got last year!

After we got our tree, Karry showed the boys how to cut off the end of a Christmas tree.  Then we moved on to decorating:

We think our Christmas CDs must still be packed, because we can only find one CD, and we're getting a little tired of it.  The kids love it though.  It's the Very Veggie Christmas CD.  Isaac says "dance Mommy!" every time Feliz Navidad comes on!  As we decorated the tree, and throughout this Christmas season, we have been quizzing the boys: "what do we celebrate on Christmas? And who was Jesus' mother?" etc.  We started this kind of questioning last year, and we increase the information and the quizzing as we go.  After we decorated the tree, we had hot chocolate.  It was the first time the boys had ever tried it.

A few days later, I was finding myself amazed at the trivial things that can entertain our boys sometimes.  Like bugs.  Somehow a fly that couldn't fly very well found it's way into our house.  It had all 3 of the boys' attention.  That was, until Kaleb went to pick it up and accidentally smashed it.  Oops.

We had friends over this last Saturday, and we've just really been in the entertaining mood!  Here is a photo of our boys with our friends' little girls on Saturday night:

Left to right: Kaleb (3), Molly (2), Noah (2), Maggie (4), Isaac (4).  Maggie and Isaac were in the NICU together because they were both tiny preemies.  We met Maggie's parents in the NICU and have been friends with them since!  The kiddos were having some "quiet time" here after being noisy and rowdy! 

Sunday afternoon, we had Poppie, Joey, and Mima over.  They are: our little Noah's biological 1/2 brother, and Noah's birth mom's father and grandmother.  Miney (Noah's birth mom's mother) was home sick, unfortunately.  :(  We have a neat tradition of doing a Christmas get-together with them each year, a week or so before the typical Christmas celebrations.  They left by about 5, and the night was still young to us! 

Our church was cancelled that night because of ice (we have church service in the evening), and we were so bummed & wanted to see people, so we ended up inviting over some friends from church who live just down the street from us.  Their daughter watches our boys once a week when we go to our home community group for church.  She and her younger sister are sweet girls.  We played Catch Phrase with their family and also had fun chatting!

We made some adorable little Candy Snowmen the other day, and I thought I would share the recipe and some photos with you all.  Also, I wanted to show you a fun way to wrap a gift! 

I have been learning to knit.  My grandma gave me a knitting lesson once, but I quickly lost it (I think that was about 4 years ago, just before Isaac was born).  Now, I've just been using the instructions on this website.  It's still a tricky thing to learn (I think!), but I keep trying, and I'm picking it up!

Another thing, as a Christmas gift from Miney & Poppie (John & Cathy), my husband and I received a copy of The Western Garden Book, and this afternoon, I have been researching all kinds of plants.  With our house popping up, and us moving in around March (spring time!), it will be just about time to plant.  We need to decide which kinds of trees we will have, etc.!  I have a couple of goals--lots of useful landscaping (fruits, veggies, cutting flowers, flowers for fragrance, flowers for tea, herbs, etc.), and no leaves, berries, or anything poisonous (of course, with children!). 

One last thing--we've been celebrating Advent with our kids this year.  My husband reads through a little book we got from our church, and reads Scripture.  The kids tell him every night that he needs to read from "Matthew," and they say "we have Matthew in OUR Bible."  :)  We've also been going through this neat little book with ornaments from Family Life, called Adorenaments.  We got it as a gift last year, and we're really enjoying it!

If I don't write again before Christmas (I still have to wrap all of those presents I finished buying in November!!!), have a Merry Christmas!  And remember my challenge to wives in the December Newsletter--watch your tongue when you're under stress.  Remember that you can't control it, but He can!  :)