Merry Christmas!

We've had a Christmas marathon going on since Saturday.  We've had family Christmas time every day with the big closing tonight at Grandma Schulte's.  It was another great year full of memories...

December Favorites

I haven't done a favorites post in a while...


Venus Embrace Razor 
I have been buying Target disposables for as long as I can remember but one of these Venus Embrace razors was in my November Birchbox and holy moly...I LOVE it!!!  I will definitely continue to buy the refills for this :)

Oke Doke Corn Puffs
YUM! It's buttery goodness!

Amazon Prime Membership
I've had the Amazon prime membership for a little over a year now and I can't say enough good things about it.  It's $80 a year and it gives you two day shipping on all prime eligible items, streaming videos and more.  The two day shipping definitely comes in handy this time of year

Michael Buble Christmas Album
This actually came out last year but I still love it just as much this year.  We have Christmas music on every night while we're making dinner and these songs have definitely been added to the Christmas music rotation

Boppy Maternity Pillow
I don't remember being this tired when I was pregnant with Benjamin.  I'm sure it's just a combination of being pregnant AND having a toddler running around the house.  The Boppy maternity pillow David gave me is amazing.  It's my night time best friend

Bigelow Vanilla Chai
This stuff is good! I buy it at Target, not sure if it's sold anywhere else - but since I'm practically at Target every other day I've never had to look for it anywhere else.

 

For the Love of Trees

Ya'll know I'm CRAZY about Christmas, so it's only fitting that we have not one, not two, but THREE trees.
We have the fake tree in the living room, a small real Frasier Fir in the bay window of the kitchen and the newest addition is the freshly cut tree from PeaRidge which we decided to put under the pergola in the backyard.
And you better believe if we had more stuff downstairs I'd have a full size tree down there too, but we just don't have much down there yet so I'll save that for next year - watch out David because 2013 it's ON!

Here are a few pictures from our annual visit to PeaRidge

 oh yes I did...fabulous!

David thought that tree was kind of scraggly looking but I LOVE that little tree

 Our little lumber jack

It's kind of crazy to see how big the group has gotten.  I remember when it used to just be me and David along with Mike and Katie...I'd say we've increased by a few :)

I tried to talk about Santa a couple of days before we went to the tree farm knowing they have a Santa there but Benjamin still seemed a little skeptical at first but it only took a minute for him to warm up and start talking about his love for choo choo's

I'm kind of bummed this one came out so blurry but I still think it's cute

Holy Cow!

I'm pretty sure you've probably heard by now that we found out what we're having :)

Thanks to pinterest and the amazing help we got from Kevin, Jessica and my Mom we were able to find out in a very fun way :)
We started out with a few balloons - 2 pink and 2 blue 

Kevin and Jessica had our sealed ultrasound picture and took care of filling the box with either blue or pink

We took a few pictures in anticipation

I know I look sorta terrified in the picture but I promise it's pure shock and not devastation:)
Can you believe it?  A GIRL!!!!!

I'm still kind of in shock.  And I may or may not have accidentally knocked Benjamin off the chair with my flailing arms - he didn't seem to mind though, he was just excited to see those balloons

This look pretty much sums it up - just trying my hardest to soak it in.  I will cherish these memories for the rest of my life

I'm still here!

I had a slight hiccup with blogger - apparently I ran out of storage.  Total bummer.  But since I love looking back on some of these posts and they go back a couple of years I really didn't want to start over so I decided to make things work with the original :) So I'm back in business baby!!!  But oh so very behind...so let me try to catch up.

Let's rewind to Thanksgiving

So cute to see Great Grandma Carter and Benjamin reading together

 And it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without a little football action :)

It's crazy how warm it was on Thanksgiving this year, but I'm not complaining - it gave us the great opportunity to get some very cute pictures outside

I'll try to get completely caught up by the end of this week - so much has happened in the past few weeks!

Long Over Due Basement update

So remember way back when - about 8 months ago when David started on the basement (HERE)?

We had a LONG break.  The summer came and everyone just got super busy and then I was basically out of business for a little over a month so David had his hands full with Benjamin.  It wasn't until a few weeks ago that he was finally able to get back down there and start working again.  Thankfully his Dad has been a HUGE help and has definitely sped things up a bit.  This week the drywall people came and it's really starting to come along. So right now, all the dry wall is hung and they are just finishing up on the tap and mud process. 

 This is the space you see as soon as you open the door to the basement

 And once you step in the basement and turn right this is your view.  This room will be the main living area with couches and a TV - that opening towards the back will be door-less and will flow into the second room which will most likely be a combination of work out equipment and my craft stuff

And here's a better view of that second room

 And the other side of the second room with the huge closet - we'll use for seasonal clothes not in use.

 And finally the third room which will be the spare bedroom

There's still a pretty good chunk of space behind the stairs that will be left unfinished for all the shelves David built earlier this year for storage - but it's FULL of stuff right now so I will spare you the pictures.

Can't wait until the lights are turned back on downstairs so I can show pictures with the actual walls up.  Right now it's justtoo dark down there.  

Happy Halloween!

I can't believe it's October 31st! Time seems to be flying by.  And just so you know - November 1st is officially the Holiday kick off over here.  Expect Christmas music on a daily basis from here on out :)

Back to Halloween...
We carved pumpkins Tuesday night

Ewww...the worst part - cleaning out the inside :(

Benjamin helped for a few minutes

Family of Pumpkins

Benjamin's Farmer overalls and plaid flannel outfit are underneath the jacket and vest - it just got too cold out :( 

We learned Benjamin loves M&M's and Popcorn tonight

 

It was a fun night but I feel like we didn't see as many trick or treaters this year :(  We have candy left over - not sure if that's a good or bad thing.  I definitely love candy so maybe it's not so bad!

Fall Festival

Benjamins school had a Fall Festival this week.  The main attraction was a petting zoo and inside they had chili, apple cider, games and pictures.

It took Benjamin a while to warm up to the animals but it was still a lot of fun

 

Pumpkin Patch

Since tomorrow is Halloween I figured I should finally post our pumpkin patch pictures before pumpkins are old news.  We went a few weekends ago when it was still nice enough to wear shorts :) 

This was also right after David gave Benjamin a hair cut - it makes him look like such a big boy!

 He was excited to go down, but only did it the one time.  Those potato sack thingy's made it super fast and I don't think Benjamin was expecting that sort of speed! FYI David went down right after Benjamin but I don't think he'll be happy if I post that picture :)

Apparently there were two entrances to the corn maze - an easy path and a hard path.  We accidentally took the hard path and seriously started to get scared we were going to be stuck in there forever, but I did manage to snap a few pictures in the beginning before we all started to panic

Lots of falling...in the mud

Are we done taking pictures yet?